Cattle should be exempt from the EU’s plans to cut emissions, according to lawmakers in the European Parliament’s agriculture committee (AGRI), who have also voted to raise the threshold of poultry and pigs impacted by the plans.

The proposed overhaul of the Industrial Emissions Directive (IED), unveiled by the EU executive in April 2022, aims to reduce harmful emissions coming from industrial installations, the scope of which is being expanded to include some of the largest livestock farms in the EU.

The Commission’s proposed threshold of 150 ‘livestock units’ (LSUs) – the point at which farms will be defined as ‘industrial’ and therefore penalised under the directive (see below for details) – has proved controversial.

Now, the Parliament’s agriculture committee – who, as an associated committee alongside the environment committee, have shared competence on all parts that touch the livestock sector – approved its opinion on Tuesday (25 April), in which it calls for cattle to be exempted entirely from the scope of the plans.

“The text the Commission has proposed is counterproductive and encourages a move towards greater concentration in the agricultural sector,” the opinion, drafted by centre-right MEP Benoit Lutgen, reads.

In their position, lawmakers prefer the status quo, stressing that the scope of this revision would place a “major administrative and economic burden on farmers breeding chickens, pigs and cattle”.

The opinion argues that, as it currently stands, this proposal gives an “undeniable competitive advantage” to the biggest businesses, who will have less difficulty in shouldering the additional administrative and economic burden.

This is especially true for cattle farms, the opinion contends, but “without an effective reduction in emissions”. As such, it proposes their removal entirely from the scope of the directive.

It also proposes increasing the livestock units to ‘more than 40,000 places for poultry, more than 2,000 places for production pigs (over 30 kg), or with more than 750 places for sows’ – in other words, directly maintaining the status quo of the current directive.

Agri stakeholders slam minister’s agreement on EU plans to slash emissions

After months of back and forth, EU ministers finally settled on their negotiating position on a proposal to see the EU’s industrial emissions slashed, but their final agreement has not gone down well with farming stakeholders.

The news was met with derision from green groups and campaigners, who denounce what they call an ‘unfortunate trend of ‘agricultural exceptionalism’”.

“Animal farming, despite being a major polluter, is almost entirely exempt from the responsibility for the damage it causes to the environment and local communities and the negative externalities of this sector are widely ignored by decision-makers,” warned a recent report from campaign group Compassion in World Farming.

The group pointed out that emissions of methane and ammonia have stagnated for over a decade, with Commission data showing that, while the IED succeeded in reducing emissions from the industrial sector between 2007 and 2017, emissions of ammonia and methane from animal farming have remained the same.

But the EU farmers’ association COPA-COGECA celebrated the fact that agriculture MEPs “rejected the Commission’s ill-suited legislative instrument towards livestock farming” and showed their support to EU farmers.

The association has been pushing back against the plans for months on the ground that it is unworkable for farmers and that they should not be lumped with the likes of other industrial installations, such as those mining coals or producing chemicals.

EU ministers have already settled on their negotiating position on the proposal, while lawmakers in the European Parliament’s environment committee are set to adopt its legislative report on 25 May 2023.

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