What’s the beef? Vote on industrial farming emissions splits EU Parliament

(EurActiv, 26 May 2023) The European Parliament’s environment committee has adopted its position on EU rules to slash industrial emissions, including from the largest farms, which is in direct contrast to that of their agricultural counterparts, who may now table their own amendments for the final vote.

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, whose scope is being expanded to include some of the largest livestock farms in the EU.

With the vote, held on Wednesday (24 May), environment MEPs backed the Commission’s proposal to extend the IED to include larger-scale cattle farming, as well as more pig and poultry farms.

Concretely, the proposed amendments would see pig farms and poultry farms with more than 200 ‘livestock units’ (LSUs) and cattle farms with 300 LSU or more fall under the directive – twice that of the Commission’s original 150 LSU proposal.

Both figures are thresholds at which fams will be defined as ‘industrial’ and therefore penalised under the directive (see below for details).

However, it does include, for the first time, a reciprocity clause in an effort to ensure imports from producers outside the EU meet requirements similar to EU rules.

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EurActiv, 26 May 2023: What’s the beef? Vote on industrial farming emissions splits EU Parliament