The Dutch Ministry of Agriculture is investigating its dairy farms after it was discovered that some had been incorrectly registering their cows in order to fraudulently increase production without meeting environmental requirements on phosphates.
A third of the 8,000 Dutch dairy farms are suspected of fraud. A block was put on over 2,000 farms at the start of February so that on-the-spot checks could be carried out.
In the Netherlands, each dairy cow must be registered: prior to giving birth to a calf, a cow is registered as half a livestock unit and after giving birth as one unit. In this fraud, multiple births are attributed to some cattle, while others, which have calved, are not registered as having given birth. This allows the farmer to have a larger herd and thus to increase milk production despite the restrictions imposed by the national plan for the reduction of phosphates. Compliance with this plan was the condition on which the Netherlands was granted a derogation by the European Commission to the organic nitrogen cap set by the nitrates directive. The Commission has already sought explanations from the Dutch authorities.
Socialist MEPs Éric Andrieu (France), Marc Tarabella (Belgium) and Maria Noichl (Germany) are to question the Commission on these “ghost cows”. They have drafted a priority question requesting a written response setting out how the Commission intends to react to this large-scale fraud which could harm the whole of the European dairy sector. They want to know whether the Commission intends to bring a halt to the exemptions enjoyed by the Netherlands on polluting emissions.
The rise in EU milk production since January 2017 “is quite simply unsustainable in the current market”, warned European Commissioner Phil Hogan at the Agriculture Council on 29 January (see EUROPE 11950). According to the latest Commission figures, milk collection in the EU was 6% higher in November 2017 than in the same month the previous year. (Original version in French)