Directive (EU) 2024/1785

Nitrate Vulnerable Zones. High cattle-density areas partly coincide with Nitrate Vulnerable Zones (NVZs) designated under Directive 91/676/EEC, in which specific water-protection measures apply. The cattle sector is not subject to the E-PRTR environmental declaration obligation; the register therefore does not allow, for this sector, the same level of per-plant detail available for the included categories.

Scope of the E-PRTR. According to CEIP/EMEP (Centre on Emission Inventories and Projections) inventories, the technical system feeding the Convention on Long-Range Transboundary Air Pollution (CLRTAP, 51 ratifying countries), European cattle farms account for about 67% of the continent's livestock ammonia (NH₃) emissions. The European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register (E-PRTR) does not cover cattle farms, since the species is not among those subject to declaration.

The Industrial Emissions Directive (IED, 2010/75/EU) sets size thresholds above which a farm must apply for an Integrated Environmental Permit (AIA) and declare its emissions annually to the E-PRTR register: more than 40,000 places for poultry, more than 2,000 places for production pigs, more than 750 places for sows. Cattle do not appear among the thresholds set, in any version of the directive.

In 2022 the European Commission had proposed, with COM/2022/156, a revision of the IED that included thresholds for large cattle farms: over 150 livestock units (LSU). In the trilateral negotiation between the Commission, the European Parliament and the Council, this threshold was not retained in the final text. Directive (EU) 2024/1785, which concluded the revision on 24 April 2024, extended coverage to other sectors; its scope does not include the cattle sector and defers the matter to a future technical assessment.

Under the thresholds set, a farm with 40,001 broiler chickens is subject to declaration, monitoring and planned-inspection obligations; a farm with 500 dairy cows is not subject to the same obligations, since cattle are not within the scope of the IED. According to the scientific literature, ammonia production per head of cattle can be comparable to, or higher than, that of species within scope.

The E-PRTR data published by the EEA and ISPRA, used by MapTheFood for the Plants and NH₃ Emissions views, record 1,242 Italian intensive livestock plants with an active declaration as of 2024, belonging to the poultry and pig sectors. The cattle sector does not appear in the register because it is not included in its scope. The source VetInfo file from the National Livestock Database (BDN), as of 31/12/2025, instead reports 1,524,440 head of cattle in Lombardy out of 5,341,797 nationally, and 112,817 cattle activities. These are totals from the source file: to protect confidentiality, the public map publishes only municipality-by-species cells with at least 5 farms and distinguishes establishments from activities. The totals visible on the map are therefore lower and are not directly interchangeable with the raw national totals.

MapTheFood's Territorio view shows the distribution of BDN farms by municipality, cattle included. The Cattle and Nitrates view overlays this data with Nitrate Vulnerable Zones, now available for 15 regions. The co-presence of high cattle density and NVZ is not proof of a violation: it reflects a regulatory scope different from that of pigs and poultry — Annex I of the E-PRTR Regulation and the IED Directive do not include cattle among the activities subject to declaration — which does not allow, for this sector, the same level of plant-by-plant analysis made possible by the E-PRTR register.

The 2028-2034 CAP reform, currently under negotiation, is a further venue in which the regulatory scope could be reviewed. Within the regulatory framework described, the share attributed by CEIP/EMEP inventories to the cattle sector, equal to 67% of European livestock ammonia emissions, is not captured by a European public register at individual-plant level.