Efforts to Prevent IPPC Extension Stepped Up
UK - The European Commission's bid to extend IPPC to embrace all breed-to-finish pig units above 200 sows will be discussed next week by the European Agricultural Union (COPA).This will be followed by a meeting of the European Commission Working Group on Pigmeat. So far the agriculture directorate has refused to put it on the working group agenda, citing unavailability of an official from the environment directorate, reports NPA chairman Stewart Houston.
But NPA is still pressing, through the European Agricultural Union, he says, and if it fails, it will raise IPPC under any other business.
In a note to farms minister Jane Kennedy, who shares NPA's aversion to IPPC being extended, he says Holland and France now recognise the dangers in the environment directorate's plans for an extended IPPC, which would bring a further 400 pig units into IPPC in Holland and 800 more units in France.
NFU and NPA will press pig industry representatives in Spain, France, Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic to step up opposition to to the IPPC proposals.
A delegation of European Agricultural Union representatives is being put together to meet environment directorate staff and a meeting is being arranged with the Czech environment minister before the next next Environment Council meeting, in June.