Four activists have been arrested outside government offices as they highlighted links between oil and factory farming.

       Members of the Scrap Factory Farming campaign and direct action organisation Animal Rebellion, part of Extinction Rebellion, were demonstrating outside the headquarters of the government’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).

       It came on the day that Just Stop Oil protesters halted a tanker near the M4 in west London, causing traffic chaos.

       Those activists were arrested after police blocked off the road.

       At the Defra building near Westminster in central London, props resembling barrels of oil were placed outside, leaking what the activists said was a plant-based oil-like substance from them.

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       The demonstrators, who say large amounts of damaging oil are used in intensive animal agriculture, created cow hoofprints and chicken footprints in the liquid on the pavement.

       They held placards with slogans saying “Defund Oil. Scrap Factory Farming”.

       Spokesperson Robert Gordon said: “Factory farming is fuelled by oil. A huge amount of land and oil-based fertilisers are used to grow crops, like soya and grains, for animal feed to be given to animals cruelly kept in sheds.

       “Farming in this way is incredibly oil-intensive and inefficient, contributing to the climate and ecological crises that threaten our collective future.”

       Animal feed prices have gone up 70 per cent in a year, he said, due to rising fuel costs.

       “This shows that animal agriculture is unsustainable for farmers, as well as for the planet, owing to their reliance on unpredictable, expensive, and environmentally damaging fossil fuel supplies.

       “We are targeting Defra today because they have a moral responsibility to support farmers in a just transition to a sustainable plant-based food system for the livelihoods of farmers and the lives of us all.”

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       Government sources say ministers do not favour either large- or small-scale farms.

       The Scrap Factory Farming campaign is fighting in the courts for a judicial review over factory farming, saying it risks causing more pandemics, antibiotic resistance, and air pollution.