How a Tesco chicken deal may have helped pollute one of the UK's favorite rivers

A major deal to supply chicken to Tesco almost a decade ago could be linked to the ecological disappearance of one of the UK's favorite rivers, a Guardian investigation has found .

As the River Wye flows through mid Wales to the Severn Estuary, it passes through the so-called Chicken Capital of the UK , where an estimated 20 million birds are raised in the river's catchment area.

The role of sewage and human sewage in polluting our rivers has been heavily criticized, but chicken manure from a growing number of intensive poultry farms also plays a huge role.

< p class="dcr-xry7m2">Bird droppings are high in phosphates and are spread on the ground as fertilizer to promote crop growth, but the soil can no longer absorb the amount of manure spread along the Wye, and the ru issellement turns the river into what activists describe as "pea soup".

Chicken waste has been identified ed by scientists at Lancaster University as one of the biggest sources of phosphorus pollution in the Wye Catchment causing 'pea soup' algae blooms.

The hotspot of chicken farming in Wye is Herefordshire, where bird numbers began to soar in the early 1990s. Then, in 2013, a deal to supply additional chicken to Tesco, the biggest supermarket in the UK, has been granted to Cargill, which has a major processing plant in the county.

Around the At the same time, Cargill announced an extension of 35 million pounds from its Hereford factory to increase the number of chickens it could process. "data-spacefinder-type="model.dotcomrendering.pageElements.ImageBlockElement" class="dcr-eiqqge">