Schouten: 'Confidence in dairy farming is gone'

Minister Carola Schouten (Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality) informed LTO Nederland, ZLTO, NAJK and Rabobank on Tuesday morning, January 23, that confidence had been seriously damaged. Since Monday morning, 50 dairy farms have been locked due to cattle fraud. There may be more to come.

Schouten called the sector parties together at the ministry on Tuesday 23 January for an emergency meeting. This is because of signals of cattle fraud in 2017, committed by probably almost 6.000 dairy farmers in the Netherlands.

It is possible that these dairy farmers keep thousands of LUs (large livestock units) too much and produce hundreds of thousands of kilos of dairy cattle phosphate too much. Schouten informed LTO Nederland, ZLTO, NAJK and NZO that confidence in the dairy farming sector is gone and it is up to the sector itself to regain confidence.

Locked
Since Monday 22 January, the Dutch Food and Consumer Product Safety Authority (NVWA) has been investigating dairy farms that allegedly cheated with the registration. In the meantime, 50 companies have been locked up because the administration turned out to be incorrect. These dairy farmers are not allowed to supply or remove livestock. They have to get their records in order first.

According to Schouten, they will receive an administrative fine and may also receive an additional assessment of the phosphate reduction plan. They will also have to surrender any income support received from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). The milk should be collected. More companies will be investigated in the coming days. 

Insufficient Responsibility
As a result of the damaged trust, Schouten has decided to pilot for the Kringloopwijzer not to enter. According to Schouten, dairy farmers do not have sufficient responsibility for a company-specific account of manure and mineral flows via the Kringloopwijzer. The Kringloopwijzer has been known for some time as fraud prone.

Debate in the Chamber
This afternoon at 17.00 p.m. there will be a debate about cattle fraud. Initially, a general consultation was planned about the implementation of the sixth Nitrates Directive action programme. The last time this consultation was cancelled, it had to do with manure fraud.

© DCA Market Intelligence. This market information is subject to copyright. It is not permitted to reproduce, distribute, disseminate or make the content available to third parties for compensation, in any form, without the express written permission of DCA Market Intelligence.