European Parliament Agriculture Committee Seeks to Ease Livestock Environmental Rules
The European Parliament’s Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development, known as COMAGRI, has approved a position on how the Industrial Emissions Directive should apply to livestock production. The report was prepared by German MEP Christine Singer and supports a narrower application of the directive to farms.
The text calls for the original thresholds for coverage to be restored. The directive would apply to holdings with more than 40,000 poultry places, 2,000 places for fattening pigs, or 750 places for breeding sows. These limits concern the number of animals that facilities are able to accommodate.
COMAGRI’s position also proposes simpler registration procedures and greater use of digital systems. It calls for duplicate reporting to be removed when the relevant information has already been supplied under the Common Agricultural Policy or other legislation.
The committee further says that monitoring methods should reflect the biological and economic characteristics of livestock production. The position revisits an issue considered by the European Parliament in 2023: whether livestock farms should be subject to rules originally designed for large industrial installations.
The proposal corresponds with requests from farming organisations including Copa-Cogeca and ASAJA. Those groups have questioned the effects that wider application of the directive could have on family farms and on small and medium-sized producers.
Copa-Cogeca and ASAJA have said that additional administrative, financial and investment requirements could affect the competitiveness of such farms and accelerate concentration in the sector. These statements describe the organisations’ position; they are not presented as a confirmed outcome of the directive’s application.
COMAGRI’s approval does not complete the European Parliament’s procedure. The Committee on the Environment, Public Health and Food Safety, or ENVI, must continue examining the proposal before the Parliament can move towards a final position. For now, the agriculture committee’s text supports more limited coverage of livestock under the directive and lower regulatory burdens for European farms.
