The Netherlands lost 10 percent of its farms last year, and the trend is likely to continue, said Ferry Leenstra, project manager of sustainable animal husbandry at Wageningen University.
“That implies the farms that stay are going to get larger,” she told a Canadian farm tour hosted by the Dutch economic affairs ministry, which oversees agriculture.
Farms operate as independent businesses, but the livestock sector has been under intense scrutiny for more than 30 years. Non-government organizations and the public have questioned what were once considered normal farm practices.
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Dutch farmers have been raising livestock intensively since after the Second World War, when it was needed to supply a hungry continent suffering from six years of conflict. However, activist groups started to question the practice as the manure piled up, water quality was affected and epidemics resulted in mass slaughter of animals.
In 1997, classical swine fever resulted in the slaughter of 11 million pigs. Further slaughter occurred following outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease in 2001 and avian influenza in 2003. The Netherlands also had BSE and an outbreak of Q fever in goats in 2007, raising concern over zoonotic diseases. Eighty people died from Q fever, a bacterial disease that was traced back to goat manure spread on farmland.
At the same time, distaste was growing for tail docking, battery cages for laying hens and gestation stalls for sows. NGOs, activists and political groups such as the Green Party pushed hard for reform.
The European Parliament started to pass laws with specific deadlines for compliance. Countries such as the Netherlands put even more stringent requirements into effect.
The Netherlands’ 150-year-old Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals was a leader for better livestock care. It is a member of the Euro Group for Animals, a European umbrella group for animal welfare groups.
“In 60 or 70 years of livestock farming, intensive farming systems were set up in the Netherlands. They didn’t take into account what the side-effects of these intensive farming systems would have on the environment and animal welfare,” said Bert van den Berg of the SPCA.
“By the time people started questioning these farming systems, already millions had been invested and it was very difficult to change these systems for animal welfare.”
Cost is a major obstacle to change.
“Farmers have very little market power, and they constantly get signals to keep the price low,” he said.
“It must be cheap. If you have no power to do anything else, you try to keep your costs low and scale up and intensify.”
As a result, not much money is left to fund research and development.
“It is very difficult to innovate in this sector,” he said.
“Nevertheless, they are very innovative on bringing down the cost price and seeing about animal welfare.”
Consumers lobbied for assurances that animals were raised in a humane manner. They also said they were willing to pay more at the grocery store.
University researchers worked with the Dutch farmers union to establish humane standards for the production of meat and eggs using a three star ranking system called Better Life.
Farmers joining the program are audited for animal welfare and other quality controls. They pay for these third party audits. As well, several retailers have accepted the Better Life labels on meat products.
For example, pork sells for a 15 percent premium if the farm receives one star and chicken for 25 percent more.
The Dutch Food Retail Association embarked on a sustainability path 10 years ago.
While many of the 4,300 supermarkets in the association adopted the star system for meat, dairy and eggs, they also developed their own specifications for suppliers, said Marc Jansen, head of the association.
Relentless pressure from NGOs and activists pressured government to change laws and forced retailers to find animal welfare friendly suppliers.
“We got attacked by NGOs,” Jansen said. “NGOs are the voice of society and we got a bit tired of these single issues and then we got attacked in the papers.”
Organic food was initially showcased but a different strategy was needed because that sector is still a small part of the overall market.
Retailers needed enough customers willing to spend extra to make the initiative worthwhile. As a result, they decided to create their own sustainability agenda, which sometimes moved ahead of the legislators.
“There are no real rules for sustainability. That is where you have to make choices,” Jansen said.
Two new products are added every year with specific production requirements.
The first initiative came in 2005 when retailers decided to offer cage free eggs. The cages were banned throughout Europe in 2012.
Pasturing dairy cows for six hours a day for 120 days is required under the organic regimen. This was adopted for the retail program.
Castration of boars is likely to end by 2018, but retailers started to offer pork from intact males in 2009.
The EU said at that time that pain relief was necessary, so the retailers spent money on a program that farmers could use to buy sedation equipment. They added three cents per kilogram to the price of pork to cover the cost.
“We no longer give the consumers the choice of buying poultry or pork that defies the legislation.”
Retailers announced minimum standards for an overall sustainable meat production initiative in June 2012 and told slaughterhouses and producers to develop criteria on health, welfare, the environment and farm sustainability.
Retailers understand that to implement some welfare changes is cost prohibitive. Also, building new barns can involve a lot of local government red tape.
“It is a minefield and it can take you years,” he said.
However, retailers do not contract directly with producers. Instead ,they deal with processors to provide the kind of food they want. These products command a premium price as an incentive for participation so that retailers receive a consistent supply.
They also want to ensure there is a tier of consumers willing to pay more for what are considered value added products.
“If everybody is on the minimum standards for the Dutch market, there is no added value. Sustainability is always shifting,” Jansen said.
