Litter makes cows sick in Flanders

The economic damage for the Flemish livestock sector runs into the millions.

This is shown by a study by a Master's student in Economics at Wageningen University, commissioned by environmental organisation Recycling Netwerk Benelux, which attempts to map the financial impact of litter on animal husbandry for the first time.

During mowing, pieces of discarded cans or other litter sometimes end up in the animal feed. These pieces cause injuries in the stomachs of cattle. Vets know this injury as "hardware disease". This can lead to reduced milk production, illness and sometimes death of the animal.

The numbers in Flanders

145 Flemish livestock farmers responded to the survey about their experiences with "hardware disease" in the past five years. The survey was thus answered by 1.48 per cent of the total professional group of Flemish livestock farmers.

In the responses to the online survey, 68.3 per cent of the surveyed Flemish livestock farmers said they had had at least one sick animal due to hardware disease in the past five years.

They estimate that litter is the cause of the injury in 79 per cent of the cases. Among the surveyed farmers, this involves an estimated 381 animals that fell ill due to litter over the past five years, out of their reported livestock population of 19,655 animals. Of these, 165 animals are said to have died.

In order to correct the potential bias where victims are quicker to respond to a survey about the problem, a reference study was also conducted. Potential overrepresentation of disadvantaged livestock farmers in the survey was therefore corrected with a weighting factor. This makes extrapolations to the entire Flemish livestock sector possible. These statistics must be used with the necessary caution, and therefore margins of error of the estimate are indicated in each case.

Weighted by the reference study and extrapolated to the total Flemish cattle population, this gives the following estimates:

In Flanders, 5,152 to 6,227 cows fall ill every year due to litter, out of a total national population of 1.3 million cattle.

With the necessary statistical caution, it can be estimated that between 2,051 (lower limit) and 2,474 (upper limit) cattle die in Flanders each year as a result.

Heavy bill for the livestock sector

The treatment of sick cows, the reduced milk production and the death of cows incur costs for the farmers. They also spend working time clearing the land to try and prevent cows from ingesting pieces of litter. This study estimates the total economic cost for the entire Flemish livestock sector at 4.5 to 6.8 million euros annually. The livestock farmers are thus the victims of pollution over which they have no control.

For environmental organisation Recycling Netwerk Benelux, the figures from this study are an important source of information for the current political debate on tackling litter. The suffering that cans cause to cows, and the economic cost for farmers, come on top of the high costs of the fight against litter, 155 million per year, which Flemish municipalities are already faced with.

Bottles and cans make up 40 per cent of the volume of litter. Especially the sharp pieces of can are dangerous for the cows. The expansion of deposit return schemes could reduce the volume of bottles and cans in litter by 70 to 90 per cent, the Dutch research agency CE Delft calculated in September in a study commissioned by the Dutch government.

Litter causes sick cows every day. There is therefore urgency. The Flemish government of N-VA, CD&V and Open VLD promised to decide on the introduction of a deposit scheme in 2018. Recycling Netwerk therefore asks the Flemish government to speed up the process and to decide on the introduction of a deposit scheme on all plastic bottles and cans in the short term.

Press contact:

Chloé Schwizgebel

Deposit scheme project officer

chloe@fairresourcefoundation.org

+31 643288231