The government is subsidising the development of what will be the Netherlands’ biggest factory farm with over a million chickens and 30,000 pigs, according to calculations by animal rights group Wakker Dier.

The project is four times bigger than the maximum factory farm size suggested by farm minister Henk Bleker last month. Bleker wants to bring in a limit of 240,000 chickens and 10,000 pigs.
The ‘giga-farm’ development is located in the southern province of Limburg and has been given €2.1m in government cash to be spent on ‘innovation’. The subsidies were given to the developers in 2009, before Bleker was minister.
Opposition
‘It is unbelievable that behind the scenes this giga-farm is being given all sorts of taxpayers’ money, while there is so much public opposition to it,’ Wakker Dier said in a statement.
Bleker told television current affairs show Nieuwsuur this sort of development is ‘undesirable’ but that giant factory farms are not in themselves bad. ‘The technology which is being developed is usually good for both animal welfare and the environment,’ he said.
According to research by Wageningen University earlier this year, the Netherlands now has some 242 ‘mega’ factory farms for cows and pigs compared with just 95 five years ago. A mega-farm is defined by the Alterra institute as one which has 7,500 pigs or 250 dairy cows or 2,500 veal calves.
Most of the mega-farms are in Noord-Brabant, Overijssel, Limburg and Gelderland provinces, where they have generated considerable local protest.
Intensive farming
The Netherlands is one of the most animal-intensive farming countries in the world, with annual production of 450 million animals and birds for consumption.
The move towards mega-farms is part of continuing consolidation in farming. Last year, the Netherlands had some 50,000 livestock farms, compared with 78,000 10 years ago.
Last year, Bleker urged local councils to continue to hold back mega-farm developments pending the outcome of a health council report on the likely effect on public health of farms with thousands of animals. That report is due in the third quarter of 2012.
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