Farmers' union against
Largest dairy farm in the EU will soon be in Spain
The largest dairy farm in the European Union (EU) can soon be found in the north of Spain. At least if the plans of the cooperative Valle de Odieta go ahead. The aim is to set up a company with 20.000 animals, but even the Spanish Farmers' Union is not ready for that.
Within five years, the largest dairy farm in the European Union (EU) can be visited in the vicinity of Saragossa. The cooperative Valle de Odieta plans to set up a dairy farm with the size of 20.000 animals there. The company will have access to 900 hectares of land and 250 employees.
Animal health time bomb
The regional Farmers' Union, COAG, is anything but happy with the plans and is therefore critical of them. The barn is described as a time bomb in the field of animal health.
COAG: 'If an outbreak of, for example, bovine tuberculosis (TB) occurs in a barn of this size, 20.000 must be killed immediately. A loss of more than 16 million euros. Four times as much as the national budget for animal health allows.'
In addition, the so-called mega stable has even more adverse effects. For example, the company replaces an average of 432 farms, which means that a total of 726 jobs are at risk of being lost. Then there is no mention of the major attack that the company is going to commit on the water supply. That is an important limiting factor in Spain in particular. There are also concerns about the large quantities of manure that the company will produce.
Petition against the plans
In a counter reaction, the Boerenbond has started a petition against the plans, but also to defend production on small and medium-sized companies.
There are similar counter-reactions to dairy farms of this scale elsewhere in the EU. For example, in some places in France it is even refused to process milk from extremely large companies. In the Netherlands, the definition of a mega company starts with numbers below 1.000, but this is enough to frighten society in particular. In addition to plans in France and Spain, there are also plans in the United Kingdom regarding the construction of extremely large dairy farms.
Herman van den Pol
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