Research project NP/DD/04 (Research action NP)
In the Belgian agricultural production, the sector "animal production" and mainly the cattle, pig and poultry concerned chains, contribute to 61.6% of the final production which is 157 milliards B.F. They contribute to the national economy, to the maintenance of the land and are a source of employment
In the view of the sustainable development practices and of the tools adapted to a control of the impact on local ecosystems, it imports for each government to have a set of levers (norms, regulations, directives, subsidies). Inside each production chain they will allow to control or orient the impact of the livestock production system so on the edible product quality that on the local environment, as, a fortiori, on the global ecosystem.
On a legal point of view the control tools adapted to the different type of production are numerous. They concern each time a specific aspect of the production, they regulate, limit or orient the production in a sometimes contradictory manner. i.e..: The implementation of milk quotas and of suckling cow primes has allowed to control the dairy production it has had for subsidiary effect a concentration of the production and by so of the stocking rate on a limited number of exploitation, milk and meat farms in the east and in the north of the country, breeding farm in the south of the country. In pig production regulation concerning construction control breach to the environment, they limit the re-deployment on the south of a production too concentrated in the north.
To provide coherence between the levers and to imply them in a context of quality and sustainable development it is necessary to envisage them drawn to the scale of the whole chain. At all levels: - livestock production systems and their different agronomic factors climate, ground, plant, transformation by animals, - final transformation and marketing of elaborated products it is necessary to take into account the agro-environmental, economical, social and in some way ethical implications.
To achieve such an integration it is preliminary necessary to the to develop an exhaustive information on the currently available levers.
The project will proceed to a detailed inventory of the existing levers along the totality of the animal production chains.
The working strategy will be as follows: In a first phase, for each chain (milk, bovine, pork or poultry meat, eggs.) inquires will be driven in primary (production), secondary (transformation) and tertiary (marketing) sectors. They will have in line a precise description of each level of the chain, of to the totality of the norms, regulations, and measures currently existing in their implication concerning the limitation of pollutions and the control of the quality.
In a second phase the gathered data's will be structured in a bottom-up approach and then evaluated as for the coherence, the efficiency the interrelations between sectors and for the existing defaults.
The synthesis will end on the one hand to a detailed description, on the other hand to a set of recommendations on the means and complementary studies that should be implemented to perfect or develop norms and currently existing tools.
Normes, réglementations, directives: impacts qualité - environnement dans les filières de production animale : rapport final
Bruxelles : SSTC, 1999 (SP1082)
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