Lawyers for Avara Foods and Freemans of Newent say legal claim backed by 1,300 people is ‘entirely inferential’
Lawyers for one of the country’s biggest producers of industrially farmed chicken have attacked a claim that they are responsible for pollution in the River Wye and River Usk.
More than 1,300 people have signed up to sue Avara Foods, its subsidiary Freemans of Newent and the local sewage company Welsh Water for extensive and widespread pollution in the rivers and their catchment areas.
In what their lawyers are calling the UK’s biggest ever environmental pollution claim, they blame the companies for the rivers turning green in the summer and becoming smelly and slimy.
But at a preliminary hearing at the high court in London on Monday, Charles Gibson KC, representing Avara and Freemans, said the claim that their activities had caused the river pollution was “entirely inferential and is an oversimplification”.
