Keith Melville

In his letter in Wednesday’s Beacon, Dairy industry and pollution, Alistair Anderson says I appear to believe the dairy industry has a God-given right to pollute our environment at will.

Anderson’s imagination is running riot in response to what I actually wrote.

Nowhere in my letter did I claim, suggest or hint that the dairy industry has a right to pollute, let alone a God-given right to pollute at will.

I am aware that the Resource Management Act does give parties to the dairy industry certain emission rights, but I was not referring to that.

In my letter the previous Friday, I said most of us would acknowledge we must work towards eliminating all industry emissions, and I listed some of the things the dairy industry was doing to reduce its pollution.

I also said the Government was taking a sensible approach in considering law changes to prevent threatened legal action against the dairy industry for emissions, especially when the industry was working to eliminate them.

Anderson says the Government is acting reprehensibly at a time when the public cannot afford the butter the industry produces.

Litigation will do nothing to reduce the price of butter, though it could increase its cost and reduce the industry’s competitive advantage against Northern Hemisphere producers, who have a much bigger environmental footprint comparatively, than the dairy industry here.