Due to the expansion of European environmental laws, more pig and poultry farms will soon fall under the so-called Industrial Emissions Directive (IED).
Minister of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality Piet Adema stated in a recent parliamentary letter that the criterion for pig and poultry farms will be lowered to 300 sows, 500 fattening pigs or other pigs, 10,714 laying hens, and 5,000 broilers or other chickens.
Additionally, the expansion of the IED will include cattle farms with 150 or more animals and will also start counting the greenhouse gas methane.
As it currently stands, the existing directive covers about 4% of pig and poultry farms in the EU. The European Commission wants to expand this. As a result, 13% of the largest cattle, pig, and poultry farms will fall under the directive, collectively responsible for 60% of ammonia and 43% of methane emissions from the livestock sector.
Next week in Brussels, EU countries will again stress that administrative and accounting requirements for the relevant agricultural businesses should be kept as minimal as possible. The Netherlands, like several other countries, believes that the impacts on farms that will fall under the IED should be fully assessed first.
In the European Parliament's agriculture committee, there is strong opposition to the name of the new IED regulation. They argue that the term 'industrial' is not appropriate for animal and livestock farming.