Something new is coming again for the pig keepers, after they already had to cope with the so-called “Animal-Welfare Technical Control Board” and the “Mexico flu”. This time, the horror shows up in the form of a so-called “guide for the detection and evaluation of nitrogen deposition”.

What sounds so cumbersome, complicated and very much like bureaucratese, lives up to its promise: The “guide for the detection and evaluation of nitrogen deposition” (also called “ammonia guide”, as a moniker) is meant to “sweeten” the ready-to-build-and-invest farmer’s life when it comes to issuing future building applications. Apart from the Federal Immission Control Act, the Technical Instruction on Air Pollution, etc. the guide’s requirements would have to be fulfilled in future in the case the guide were put into force.

Remaining as it is currently, this provision would lead to a building freeze with regard to piggeries all over Germany. The provision serves as no more than just a regulatory control instrument of structural policy which is by no means practical.

From the pig keepers’ point of view, even the revised version of the draft guide is quite an absurdity, for various reasons. There is, for instance, no justification for evaluating forest to the extent it is (over-) estimated. The “initial level of pollution” is overvalued by 100 %. Accordingly, the corresponding “initial-level-of-pollution map” is exceedingly questionable, all the more because just one single measuring is taken as a basis for the whole of Germany! Beyond that, “humus stipulations” and “nitrogen-indicator plants” are going to play a major role when it comes to the decision on whether or not putting up a building will be allowed for.

What’s most distressing is the fact that as the next step to be taken every time the approval is refused, a case-by-case review is to be carried out according to the ammonia guide, in the form of a yearlong individual measuring performed at the respective farm. The farmer would be forced into paying for the costs caused by determining the “initial level of pollution”, which would amount to approximately 50 000 euros. That’s quite a substantial amount which is indeed suitable to nip every piggery-building application in the bud! It seems as if all those farmers were to be victimised who installed “biotopes” on their farms over the past years. Mostly concerned are the upgrading farms – almost 90 % of all farms would produce negative inspection results and would then have to undergo the expensive individual measuring!

Nowadays, with the financial meltdown and the emergency chutes for banks visible to the naked eye, such a monstrous bureaucratic thing as a freebie economic stimulus package would not be an easy thing to introduce. We, the pig keepers, do not demand money to be donated by the state – but then again we do demand not to have obstacles be thrown in our way! There needs to be a level playing field for everyone!