On 2 September 2026, the European Parliament’s AGRI committee voted to permanently exclude
cattle farms from the Industrial Emissions Directive, reinstate the old 2017 thresholds for pig and
poultry farms, and push back the deadline for applying even those watered-down rules to September
2027. Industrial livestock walked away with a win on every single point.
This didn’t come out of nowhere. The IED’s last revision, finalised in 2024, was already a major
concession to the sector: it excluded cattle, capped its scope to only the very biggest pig and poultry
operations, and handed livestock a lighter permitting regime than other polluting industries get. The
current Environment Omnibus was supposed to simplify legislation, instead, MEPs went further,
scrapping even the requirement to review the cattle exemption later on.
But the science doesn’t lie: animal farming is the single biggest polluter within EU agriculture. By the
Commission’s own count, once you include the feed it takes to raise them, livestock is responsible for
81–86% of all agricultural greenhouse gas emissions in the EU. On top of that, animal farming drives
most of agriculture’s ammonia pollution, contaminates waterways, and fuels deforestation to grow
animal feed. This is exactly the kind of industry the directive was designed to regulate, yet it’s now
permanently exempt.
The story isn’t over though: the file still has to pass through the ENVI committee and a plenary vote
before Parliament locks in its position. That’s the next, and possibly last, chance to put cattle back on
the table, and to hold the EU’s biggest polluters accountable.
