Diapering cows in Bavaria

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Talk about raising a stink! With support from the Bavarian Farmers Union (BBV), alpine dairy farmer Johann Huber is protesting against fertilization regulations by putting diapers on his 18 cows, The Independent reports.

German regulations ban fertilizer on slopes with a gradient of more than 15 per cent in an effort to meet European Commission standards on nitrate run-off. Anton Kreitmair, president of the Upper Bavaria section of the BBV, told German publication Wochenblatt that "this could be the end of smaller farms with livestock, the image of the foothill of the Alps and the mountain regions they characterize," and demanded that the ban be lifted.

However, Commission spokesman Steffen Schulz told NBC News that "we are not concerned about the cows but about the active fertilization by farmers," especially since in Germany the amount of nitrate in groundwater is already above the regulation's limits in many places. BF