Dutch factory farms could move to cities

There are 200 huge livestock ‘factory’ farms in the Netherlands and in ten years’ time this will have increased to over one thousand. But this is not necessarily bad news for animal welfare or the environment.

Brothers Willy, Alex and René van Bakel own the Netherlands’ biggest dairy farm. It’s in the Peel, an area that straddles the southern-most provinces of Brabant and Limburg.

The accommodation for their 1,300 cows is light and airy. The cows are milked three times a day and never see a field. “There’s no reason they should”, says Alex van Bakel. “Cows don’t like sun. Or rain, for that matter. All they want is shelter and a lot of fresh air. I’m not saying that our cows are better off than others, but I think they must be because they produce more milk. And they live longer.”

The number of factory farms in the Netherlands will have gone up from 200 to 1,350 by 2018. A business with 250 dairy cows, 7,500 pigs or 120,000 chickens is defined as a factory farm, according to agricultural experts at Wageningen University.

Bigger is better

Research on animal welfare and environmental issues by several government advisory institutions has identified a number of advantages to large-scale farming. Infectious diseases may spread more quickly and become a danger to public health but they also lead to an improvement animal welfare and offer benefits the environment.

Alex van Bakel agrees that bigger is better. The size of his farm, which supports 13 families, makes environmental measures viable, he says.

But dozens of local protest groups are not so happy. Their actions against “high-rise flats for pigs” and “cattle factories” are supported by the environmental group Vereniging Milieudefensie and often bring results.

Mounting protest

But the Limburg village of Grubbenvorst narrowly voted in favour of a factory farm for 35,000 pigs and 1.2 million chickens in spite of mounting protest.

The council’s environmental planning executive Leon Litjens pushed through the plan with difficulty. “We are going to move six businesses that were too close to residential areas or nature reserves.

“Granted, they may put pressure on the local environment, but nationally the plan makes sense. It means less animal transports, for one. We need to look beyond our own church spire.”

Mechanised farming

Livestock farming is so mechanised in the Netherlands that factory farms do not need to be in the countryside at all and might as well be part of an industrial park.

And that is exactly what Peter Smeets, a researcher at Wageningen University, has in mind. Why not locate an “agri-business park” in the port of Amsterdam, says Smeets, who feels that the little that is left of the Dutch countryside should remain intact without the presence of factory farms.

Some farmers are all for it. “I would go for it”, says poultry farmer Mart Classens who claims his two-storey poultry farm in Venray which he claims is the largest in the country. Classens rears 350,000 chicks into laying-hens in 18 weeks. “There are techniques to handle things like smells. The environment is not going to suffer at all”, he says.

Meanwhile, the protesters are not letting up. Milieudefensie and animal welfare foundation Dierenbescherming have been staging protests for a week against the arrival of a poultry business involving 1.6 million chickens in the province of Noord-Holland.

Animal cruelty

The groups claim it will lead to animal cruelty and pollution. Milieudefensie’s Wouter van Eck concedes that agri-business parks might be “slightly better” for the environment than having factory farms dotted around the countryside but says this does not address the main objection.

“We don’t need to produce all this meat which is mostly for export anyway. And why should woods in some other part of the world be sacrificed so soya can be grown to feed our cows? Let’s have farms that are ore in harmony with the landscape.”

This sort of argument is like a red rag to a bull to Smeets: “It’s so hypocritical. The alternative would be to leave meat production to other countries. And who’s to say how they treat their animals? Milieudefensie apparently prefers to export animal suffering.”

Van Eck: “The Netherlands is not the champion of animal rights. England, Sweden and Austria are in the lead now. Besides, there are European norms and we should all comply with those.”

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