The changes to the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED), which were adopted by the European Parliament today (Tuesday, March 12) will impact “very small” pig and poultry farms, according to the Irish Farmers’ Association (IFA).
Alice Doyle, the association’s deputy president, said that the changes will require pig farms with as few as 94 sows and layer poultry farms with 21,000 birds to obtain a permit to operate.
The European Parliament formally adopted new legislation earlier today on the IED, based on a deal reached in November.
A compromise was reached by negotiators from the parliament and the Council of the EU (also known as the Council of Ministers) in November in the trilogue process, in which those two institutions, plus the European Commission, try to come to an agreement on new legislative texts.
Today, MEPs voted in favour of this agreement by 393 votes to 173, with 49 abstentions, following an earlier vote in January in which the parliament’s environment committee backed the agreement.
Although livestock farms have not been included in the scope of the revised IED at this time, it will now extend to more pig and poultry farms than at present (the IED already applies to the largest pig and poultry farms, as well as other industrial installations in non-farming sectors).
The IED will now extend to pig farms with more than 350LUs (an LU does not necessarily refer to one animal, e.g., a dairy cow is 1LU, but a younger bovine would be less than 1LU, while a pig would be lower again, and a chicken only a small fraction of 1LU).
Farms raising pigs in an extensive or organic manner, and outside for a significant amount of time in a year, will be excluded.
For poultry, the directive applies to farms with laying hens with more than 300LUs, and to farms with broilers with more than 280LUs.
For farms rearing both pigs and poultry, the threshold will be 380LUs.
According to Doyle, the IED currently applies to pig farms with 275 sows and layer farms with 40,000 birds, but the revisions will see these figures significantly reduced.
“MEPs appear to have adopted a ‘one size fits all’ approach and were unwilling to consider that farming systems are not the same across member states.”
Doyle expressed disappointment that the parliament did not consider amendments to the IED revisions, saying: “It’s a shame that the vote to consider amendments was defeated by a narrow margin.
Doyle was in Brussels today, where she met Irish MEPs in advance of the vote.
“A different outcome would have kept smaller units outside the scope of what was proposed in the IED,” she added.
“Farms are already heavily regulated and they are not ‘industrial’ units.”
The IFA deputy president claimed: “This was driven by ideology, not science, and it will mean a costly licencing regime on farming.”
According to the IFA, the revised IED would bring “very small” pig and poultry units into a scenario where they needed a licence from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to operate.
The association said that the new requirement in the IED will mean that pig farms with 94 sows and layer farms with 21,000 birds would require a licence “under the same directive as a chemical factory”.