My TL;DR:

In this country, most cows and cattle are now being kept in big barns for at least part of the year, and at least a fifth of them are kept indoors all year round.

A recent estimate was that over 1,000 ‘megabarns’ have been built in the last few years for a variety of livestock. They do not need planning permission.

Instead of the cows, there are great black bales scattered over the fields. Just about every field is now cut many times a year – but not for hay. It is all turned into silage (compressed fermented fodder).

Massive machines now make about four cuts a year, five in some years. Grass cuttings are wrapped in plastic, the huge black bales left in many a field.

Cattle are given pre-prepared quantities of feed and monitored for every drop of milk produced, or every ounce of beef. The aim is to make them as ‘efficient’ as can be, with no walking in and out for milking to waste their energy.

There is a government code on welfare, but it is quite vague and refers only to ‘enough space’ for cattle to do this and that, nothing about being able to go outdoors. There is no ‘grazing only’ label.

It seems curious that there is not the same level of concern about the ‘factory’ conditions for beef and milk production as there is for poultry

Some additional interesting info:

£1.5bn worth of cattle feed is imported per annum, the two main types being maize and soy. Some £800mn worth of each comes into the UK every year mostly to feed these cows and cattle.

Any beef or milk produced like this, whether using imported or home-grown feeds, can and does claim to be ‘British’ and as such much of it gets approval from the Red Tractor scheme.