Chicken waste crisis looms as UK axes subsidy for burning poo

The UK government has ruled out extending subsidies for power stations that burn poultry litter, according to documents obtained by GRILLED, raising concerns over where large quantities of the country’s chicken waste will now end up.

In a letter sent to the chair of the UK parliament’s energy security and net zero committee on September 1, energy minister Michael Shanks MP confirmed the government "does not intend to introduce successor subsidy support" for small-scale biomass generators, including plants that burn poultry litter, as their Renewables Obligation support expires in March 2027.

Melton Renewable Energy claims to currently process 600,000 tonnes of poultry litter a year across three power stations:  Thetford, Eye and Westfield. Without subsidy, these projects are highly likely to close; more than half of Melton’s biomass income comes from taxpayer support and Melton chief executive Eddie Wilkinson has warned the firm could consult on closures and redundancies as soon as December.

What this means for the litter currently burned by Melton is still unclear. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) is currently conducting an environmental impact assessment for the plants’ closure, but it is not yet complete.

Campaigners fear much of this waste will simply be spread on fields as a fertiliser. This common practice is strongly linked with nitrogen pollution in British rivers, including the ecological collapse of the River Wye. Though there are limits on applying excess manure inside Nitrate Vulnerable Zones, which make up roughly 70% of English farmland, enforcement is lacking and prosecutions are rare. The government is currently developing new rules for the spreading of organic materials. 

The 600,000 tonnes of manure Melton burns represents a significant share of the waste produced by the poultry industry. River Action calculates that meat and egg-laying birds together produce over 3.5 million tonnes a year, while the British Poultry Council (BPC) puts litter from broiler chickens at around 1.5 million tonnes. Both industry and government are seeking to expand chicken production as part of the poultry growth plan, but with that comes even greater amounts of waste.

GRILLED has identified three live and recently approved planning applications for poultry farms in England for which the manure management plan is to send waste directly to Melton's power stations for incineration.

"If Thetford closes, it's hard to believe that quantity of poultry litter can suddenly be handled sustainably," Dr Jonathan Scurlock, founder of the consultancy Renewable Energy in Agriculture and an expert in renewables and land use, told GRILLED. 

"The concern, of course, is that much of it will end up spread on land, adding to an already significant nitrogen pollution problem."

“Waste management crisis” | where does it all go?

The BPC and Moy Park, the UK's second-largest poultry producer and a subsidiary of Brazilian meat giant JBS, have lobbied government directly to preserve Melton’s subsidy. In correspondence obtained by GRILLED using environmental information laws, the BPC warned ministers that losing the plants risked a "waste management crisis" and "potential harm arising from the routine land-spreading of large volumes of litter’, while Moy Park told Defra the uncertainty was already affecting its "investment and planning".

Melton boss Wilkinson told GRILLED the government’s decision "leaves Melton facing the closure of five of its power stations in less than seven months, with serious consequences for the environment and the UK’s energy system which needs domestic reliable power to go alongside wind and solar."

Richard Griffiths, chief executive at the BPC, told GRILLED its members "are exploring alternative capacity, including anaerobic digestion, to ensure this valuable resource continues to support renewable energy production and the UK's domestic energy supply". 

"Where appropriate," he added, "poultry meat litter can also be applied to land in line with nutrient management plans, helping reduce reliance on manufactured fertilisers, which are energy-intensive to produce and heavily dependent on imports."

In his letter last week, Minister Shanks said: "I am aware of some concerns that, in the event of site closures, excess litter may result in adverse impacts on water quality and the protection of our landscapes and farmlands."

He claimed Defra has "confirmed that there are well established guidance and regulatory frameworks for the management of these risks" and "there is also no evidence to suggest that an alternative route for safe and sustainable disposal would not be identified."

A Defra spokesperson told GRILLED: "The storage and application of poultry litter to agricultural land is controlled by water regulations, which we are streamlining into a single and robust England-wide piece of legislation, simplifying the steps farmers must take to drive down water pollution."

The minister’s letter also closes the door on Melton's own proposal: a transitional subsidy bridging to the early 2030s, when the company says carbon capture technology could let its plants operate without public support. The government considered that potential "not sufficient, by itself, to justify introducing transitional support," Shanks wrote.

£649 million | Renewable energy or waste disposal?

The subsidies at stake are substantial. The plants at Thetford, Eye and Westfield have received a combined £649 million in Renewables Obligation payments between 2010-11 and 2024-25, according to data obtained from GRILLED, equivalent to roughly £43 million a year. 

The company’s other two biomass power stations, fuelled by straw and meat-and-bone meal respectively, could also close, having received over £500 million in subsidies since 2010. The total received by all five Melton sites since 2010-11 is £1.186 billion; company accounts show subsidy revenue made up 54% of Melton's Biomass division turnover in 2024/25.

Melton confirmed to GRILLED that it pays farmers for poultry litter under long-term commercial agreements, meaning taxpayer subsidy has, in effect, been funding payments back to the industry that produces the waste in the first place.

"It's possible Melton could keep some plants open without subsidy," Dr Scurlock told GRILLED, "but that would likely mean renegotiating supply contracts with the poultry industry."

For all that expenditure, the energy generated is modest. The three plants produced 405 gigawatt-hours of electricity in 2025 combined, according to Melton's own accounts, around 0.13% of UK electricity demand. It is effectively a waste-disposal subsidy that happens to generate a small amount of power, rather than a meaningful contributor to Britain's energy supply.

Britain's poultry producers are "part of an intensive poultry industry implicated in the ecological collapse of some of our most iconic rivers and lakes," Amy Fairman, head of campaigns at River Action, told GRILLED. "They profit from cheap chicken sold through major supermarkets and fast-food chains, yet taxpayers have provided more than £640 million to subsidise the burning of the vast quantities of manure they generate."

"Now the industry and Government wants to expand further," she continued. "Taxpayers should not be underwriting its waste disposal, while our rivers, soils and air bear the environmental cost. Government needs a credible plan for managing this waste sustainably before supporting further expansion."

A version of this story ran with The Bureau of Investigative Journalism