Around 200 German police raided on Tuesday what is set to be Europe's biggest slaughterhouse to remove activists who had occupied the site for months, demonstrators and authorities said. Around 15 animal rights activists and environmentalists who had barricaded themselves into the site in Wietze near Hanover in northern Germany in May, 'showed no resistance' but chained themselves to objects, police said. Once up and running the plant will process around 27,000 battery chickens per hour. Activists say that hundreds of factory farms rearing poultry in cruel conditions will have to be built nearby to supply the plant. 'Twenty-five overfed animals are packed into every square metre (11 square feet), and those that don't collapse under their own weight can barely move,' said Wolfgang Schindler from the Albert Schweitzer Foundation campaign group. 