ICSA president Dermot Kelleher has welcomed the omission of ruminant livestock from the final agreement on the EU’s Industrial Emissions Directive (IED). “ICSA has worked tirelessly on this issue with our partners in Farm Europe where we argued that including livestock farming within the scope of the regulation would be a huge mistake. Cattle and sheep farms are not the same as big industrial factories. These efforts have now proved successful with the conclusion of negotiations and a final agreement reached which finally recognises the specificities of agriculture and excludes ruminant livestock.”

The IED is the main EU Directive instrument for regulating pollution from industrial activities. In 2022 the EU Commission had proposed to extend the IED to include larger-scale cattle farming, as well as a threshold of 150 livestock units for all livestock. This meant that any holding with 150 livestock units or more would have been considered ‘industrial’ and therefore forced to spend large amounts of money to get licensed. Today’s result is based on an agreement between the EU Council of Ministers and the European Parliament following prolonged negotiations on the Commission’s original proposals.

Mr Kelleher said, “The reality is that including livestock farming in the scope of the IED would have added to the intense pressure that farmers are already under to deal with more and more regulation while insufficient returns from the marketplace are driving them to work harder every year.”

He said, “It is clear that dealing with the sustainability of livestock farming solely through the lens of emissions is a flawed concept as it fails to acknowledge all the positive aspects associated with grass-based livestock farming. Therefore, rather than regulating livestock farming via a simplistic approach, ICSA,  together with our partners in Farm Europe, will continue to advocate for pathways to reduce emissions that takes account of the carbon storage capacity of grasslands and all the other parameters specific to livestock farming, including promoting biodiversity and the contribution to the economic development of rural areas.”