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last update:Oct 17, 2008
English pig producers feel over-regulated
The difficulties - particularly the uncertainties - of
living with Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control (IPPC) were outlined to
the Environment select committee when it took oral evidence from the English pig
industry this week.
Struggling to complyLincolnshire farmer John Godfrey
explained how his large pig business was continually struggling to comply with
new and changing regulations. IPPC, as interpreted in England, was an
ever-shifting law which decreed pig farmers would be regulated in myriad ways
as determined by the Environment Agency, said Godfrey.
All producers
could do was wait for the Agency to visit and tell them what new requirements
were to be made of them. “Even when regulations have been introduced they are
changing all the time and we have no idea what we are supposed to do,” he said.
“For instance, we knew IPPC was coming - but we don't know, next year, what we
are going to have to do to comply.”
NPA chairman Stewart Houston said
there were “contradictions and overlaps” in the way the pig industry was
regulated. There had been over-interpretation by Defra of what the European
Union meant in its directives, and this was followed in turn by
over-interpretation by the Environment Agency of what Defra meant, he said. He
referred to the Environment Agency's requirement that some producers bring
ammonia emissions to below background levels. “It's impossible to
do.”
IPPC feeCommittee chairman Michael Jack noted
Godfrey paid an IPPC fee of over £6,000 a unit for which he receives two
inspections a year, telling what improvements are necessary. “Those improvements
are costing us money and they are doing very little to help the environment,”
replied Godfrey.
Nigel Penlington, of BPEX was asked to specify areas
where continental competitors got an easier ride from regulators. “In the
Netherlands they have funded relocation of farms, and equipment to remove odour
from pig units, and in the past they helped farmers with slurry stores,” he
said. “In Germany producers have help with biogas production and in Ireland
producers are being paid for converting to loose housing. In France an aid
package was introduced last year. I don't think it had state aid
clearance.”
Speaking for processors, Stuart Roberts, director of British
Meat Processors Association, said in the past England had world-class, efficient
pig production. "If you look at something like waste and the burning of tallow,
a number of countries have looked at the intention of European law and allowed
the burning of tallow. Perhaps when we are interpreting the law we need to look
at the intention not just the wording."
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