fight over fundamentally opposing visions for British farming.

By trying to use British libel laws, which are themselves the subject of heated debate, the pig company has raised the stakes.

For Midland Pig Producers, which supplies leading supermarkets through Tulip processors, the new factory represents the future of livestock farming in the UK. Pig farmers have been squeezed by falling prices for their meat and rising costs. The UK herd shrank by more than 40% in the decade to 2007 as cheaper imports pushed many pig farmers out of business.

Intensive pig farming has also attracted global criticism for its capacity to pollute on a grand scale, the greenhouse gases it produces, the outbreaks of disease from swine flu to foot and mouth in which it has played a part, andits abuse of animal welfare.

MPP thinks its proposals have the answer to those criticisms while setting out an economic model that would enable British farmers to survive.

Its chief executive, Martin Barker, who was Waitrose pig farmer of the year in 2009, said that the new factory would be based around a "green cycle" – slurry produced by the thousands of pigs would be mixed with plant and food waste trucked in to the site before being fed into an anaerobic digester. It would then produce fertiliser for the land that grows grain for the company's pig feed, while also generating energy from the methane gas for a profit.

Animals would be indoors all their lives in a closed system, so that many of the problems associated with intensive pig