Agriculture minister Femke Wiersma is coming under increasing pressure to exempt pig and poultry farmers from stricter regulations on manure spreading as MPs prepare to vote on the cabinet’s plans.

Wiersma says the tighter limits are needed to comply with EU limits when the Netherlands’ special dispensation ends in 2026. “We are simply not going to make it with exemptions,” she told a committee meeting last week.

But she has faced criticism from MPs, including her colleagues in the farmers’ party BBB, who have not decided whether to support her plans in Tuesday’s vote.

Poultry farming organisations are hoping they can lean on the BBB to back an amendment by the opposition parties SGP and CDA that would exempt them from restrictions on the amount of animal waste they can spread on their own fields.

The sector has run a grassroots campaign, sharing films and letters in WhatsApp groups urging the BBB to vote down Wiersma’s plans. Party leader Caroline van der Plas has responded by taking over responsibility for the manure issue from agriculture spokesman Cor Pierik.

“Disastrous”

Bert-Jan Oplaat, chair of the poultry farmers’ association NVP, said the plans would be “disastrous” for his colleagues. “If this really goes ahead then several hundred poultry farmers at least will go out of business,” he said.

Poultry farmers argue that the rules are designed to protect groundwater from pollution from manure spread on fields by cattle farmers, while the majority of waste from chicken and other poultry farms is transported to a biomass plant in Moerdijk where it is converted to green energy.

The CDA and SGP say the government should revert to earlier methods for calculating pollution that give more room to the 1,700 Dutch poultry farmers. “It would be terrible to pull the plug on business when there is no justification for it,” CDA MP Eline Vedder said.

But a spokesman for the agriculture ministry said the Netherlands had to comply with agreements made in Brussels to reduce manure levels. “It’s about the total production,” the spokesman explained.