Farming representatives have argued that many producers operate within existing regulations and say agriculture is being unfairly singled out for broader environmental pressures.<\/p>\n
A National Farmers’ Union (NFU) Cymru spokesperson said: “Welsh farmers produce food to some of the world’s highest standards and the industry is one of the most highly regulated sectors in the country.<\/p>\n
“NFU Cymru is not in a position to comment on reports of legal action related to other groups or bodies.”<\/p>\n
Sarah James, from the Country Land and Business Association Cymru (CLA), described the legal challenge as a “red herring” which risked creating “more of a gap between the industry and environmental groups and the communities that live around the rivers”.<\/p>\n
She said if the focus remained on farmers alone and the nutrient management that those industries produce, “we are never going to fix the bigger problem of water quality”.<\/p>\n
“There are a lot of other issues that come into the mix, when you look at the holistic view of a catchment like the Wye. It’s highly populated, everyone living in that catchment contributes to the nutrients in that catchment. Food production is only part of that story,” she said. <\/p>\n
A Natural Resources Wales spokesperson said it was aware River Action had started proceedings for judicial review and was “awaiting the sealed documents”.<\/p>\n
“As the legal process is now formally under way, we will not be providing any further comment at this time,” they added. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Farming representatives have argued that many producers operate within existing regulations and say agriculture is being unfairly singled…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":431259,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-431258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431258"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431258\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/431259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}