“A permit system for farming will be an utter disaster for the Irish people”, this is according to independent TD Michael Fitzmaurice, and comes as the EU Industrial Emissions Directive (IED) proposed changes to livestock units (LU). The amendments would see larger cattle, pig and poultry farms requiring permits to operate based on their emissions output.
According to Fitzmaurice the proposals “are the beginning of a slippery slope to handing the EU the legislative clout to hammer Irish farming”.
However, an Industrial Emissions Directive permit system related to emissions is already in place for large pig and poultry operations. The planned initiative, if accepted, would see the increase of the scope of the system to cover significantly more pig and poultry farms, but would also bring cattle farms under its remit for the first time. The total number of farms in the EU that will require these permits will grow from around 20,000 to around 185,000.
Speaking about the license system, Fitzmaurice says “once you must be licenced to do your job, you can be controlled and worse – stopped.”
In terms of the LU’s, he suggests that there is a possibility that, at some future point, the conversion ratios between a LU and an animal of a particular category might be changed so that a larger animal equates to more than one LU, thereby bringing even more cattle farms under the permitting system.
Fitzmaurice critically claims that “the EU is attacking the family farm, and needs to be opposed. If this move goes unchallenged it will only act to consolidate farming in the hands of big farmers.”