Northern Ireland turning Republic into a ‘toilet’ for excess manure pollution

theguardian.com:

Ireland has become a “toilet” for cross-border pollution, say campaigners, as officials investigate allegations around the movement of animal manure from Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland has the highest stocking density of livestock in the UK, with 25 million poultry birds, and intensive pig numbers at a10-year high. But the disposal of animal waste and increasing levels of pollution may now halt the expansion of its multi-billion pound export-driven industry.

This follows the discovery of allegedly falsified letters used in planning applications for livestock farms, which has triggered multiple investigations and enforcement actions by the Northern Ireland authorities.

The problems came to light in March last year when an internal investigation by the Republic of Ireland’s agri-food advisory agency, Teagasc, found documents relating to the use of signed letters in planning applications for large-scale poultry farms in Northern Ireland.

Planning authorities accept Teagasc letters as proof that farmers in the Republic of Ireland, who received the manure, are legitimate. According to Teagasc, however, 60% of the letters examined appeared either “falsified” or “altered”.

“Northern Ireland is the dirty corner of the UK, and increasingly we are seen as the dirty corner of Europe,” said James Orr, head of Friends of the Earth NI. “Now the latest dirty secret is the exporting of huge volumes of excrement to our nearest neighbour.”

Dealing with the pollution from vast quantities of animal faeces and urine has long been the hidden scourge of Northern Ireland’s livestock industry. Whether spread on farmland as a nutrient-rich fertiliser for crop growth or fed into an anaerobic digester to generate biogas, every tonne of manure must be