Downloadable datasets

The dataset is called Industrial Emissions Directive 2010/75/EU and European Pollutant Release and Transfer Register Regulation (EC) No 166/2006, version 16.0, February 2026, published by the EEA on 20 February 2026 with data reported by countries up to 10 February 2026. It brings together in a single database what individual States report separately under Article 7 of the E-PRTR Regulation and Article 72 of the IED, organised across four geographic levels, from the production site to the plant, down to the individual installation.

Intensive pig and poultry farms enter the register as plants subject to Activity 7 of Annex I of the E-PRTR Regulation, which sets the minimum reporting threshold at 40,000 places for poultry, 2,000 production places for pigs over 30 kg, and 750 places for sows. Below these numbers a farm has no E-PRTR reporting obligation: this is a threshold set by European legislation, not an editorial criterion of MapTheFood's. The map also applies the native IED-code criterion described below.

The dataset also allows a trend to be reconstructed: ammonia declared by intensive pig and poultry farms (Activity 7) in EU countries rose from around 137,000 t in 2007 to a peak of around 178,000 t in 2017-2018, then fell to around 110,000 t in 2024, a drop of almost 40% from the peak. The series should be read bearing in mind variable coverage: between 21 and 25 countries out of a maximum of 26 are present each year. Germany, Poland, Spain and France are present throughout the series.

Cattle are not covered by this Annex I activity and are not included in the register at this level, whatever the size of the farm. The box below describes the relevant scope and its effects on the register's informational coverage.

The EEA dataset also brings together, in the same file, non-livestock plants subject to other Annex I activities (feed and plant-material processing, milk treatment, intensive aquaculture). MapTheFood's Plants, Greenhouse Gases and Inspections and Controls views show only intensive farms identified by native IED code 6.6(a), 6.6(b) or 6.6(c). The NH₃ Emissions view also offers an extended E-PRTR scope limited to livestock-sector ammonia declarations; processing plants are not included in either mode.

Distinction between E-PRTR sector 7 and IED 6.6. E-PRTR declarations and the IED administrative register are separate reporting flows and do not fully coincide. The 2024 emissions file contains 764 Italian plants with an ammonia declaration in E-PRTR sector 7 — including codes 7(a), 7(a)(i), 7(a)(ii) and 7(a)(iii) — totalling 15,053.8 tonnes. Of these, 701 are linked to the livestock IED 6.6 scope adopted by MapTheFood and declare 13,931.5 tonnes. The remaining 63 plants, accounting for 1,122.3 tonnes, have no associated livestock IED 6.6 code. The NH₃ view can show or hide these 63 records; the dashed halo marks the register divergence and does not indicate that a declaration is incorrect, duplicated or unpermitted.

In 2022 the European Commission had proposed extending the IED to all farms, including cattle, above 150 livestock units: 185,000 plants in total. According to the Commission's impact assessment, the proposal would have raised the directive's coverage from 18% to 60% of livestock ammonia emissions and from 3% to 43% of methane emissions. Of the estimated reductions, 229,000 tonnes a year of methane out of 265,000 overall, and 50,000 tonnes of ammonia out of 128,000 overall, were attributed to the cattle sector.

The Commission's 2022 proposal therefore envisaged thresholds applicable to cattle farms too. Those thresholds were not retained in the approved text of Directive (EU) 2024/1785; the cattle sector is therefore not covered by the current scope. The directive provides for a Commission assessment by 31 December 2026.

The BDN (National Livestock Database) is the compulsory livestock register set up by the Ministry of Health: every farm that keeps animals, regardless of size, must be registered there. For cattle and buffalo, the European Commission has recognised it as fully operational, so its data on these species has official standing. The file used by MapTheFood reports the number of farms, activities and operators by region, province and municipality, for each species farmed, as of 31 December 2025.

From the same source (public VetInfo statistics) MapTheFood now also derives the number of animals by municipality and species, not just the number of farms: the two figures together answer both "how many farms are there in this municipality" and "how many animals are there". For poultry, the number of farms also includes family/self-consumption activity, while the number of animals includes only commercial activity, because the VetInfo statistics on animal numbers explicitly exclude family farms: for this species the two figures are therefore not directly comparable. For the other species (cattle, buffalo, pigs, sheep and goats) the exclusion does not apply and the two counts remain consistent.

The transparency register published by AGEA lists, line by line, every beneficiary of FEAGA (European Agricultural Guarantee Fund) and FEASR (European Agricultural Fund for Rural Development) funds, with the municipality of residence and the amount received in the year, under the CAP payment-transparency obligation. MapTheFood aggregates these lines by municipality, adding together the three components FEAGA, FEASR and national co-financing: the 2025 total is €7.70 billion. This is a different, broader register than AGEA's own Payments Dashboard, which publishes only payments already disbursed in the current campaign, measure by measure, without beneficiary-level detail.

Provincial and regional views sum the same published municipalities and introduce no additional observations. In the CAP & NH₃ Emissions view, IED plants remain point locations; only rankings and summaries geographically aggregate plant counts and declared NH₃. This juxtaposition does not link payments to individual plants.

Around 265,000 beneficiaries, accounting for €148 million (1.9% of the total), have no municipality indicated in the register: these are mostly individuals identified only by a code, and they remain excluded from the map because they cannot be placed on a specific territory. The data is public at beneficiary and municipality level, not at the level of a single plant: linking a payment to a specific farming business requires the CUAA (the farm's unique fiscal code), which is not included in this publication.

External cross-check. AGEA's 2024 Annual Report (Table 20, p. 43) reports a national total of €7.83 billion in CAP payments disbursed in calendar year 2024 by the entire system of Italy's 11 Recognised Paying Agencies, not AGEA alone. The 2025 transparency register's raw total, before excluding beneficiaries without a municipality, is €7.85 billion, substantially in line with the 2024 figure (a 0.3% gap, within normal year-to-year variation). The gap between this figure and the €7.70 billion published on the map therefore arises almost entirely from the geographic filter described above (beneficiaries without a municipality), not from a real difference in CAP spending between the two years.

The NVZ layer is built by MapTheFood by combining the vector datasets published individually by the regions and the Autonomous Province. The sources and regulatory references for each area included are listed below.

Level of geometric simplification. The polygons have been merged and cleaned of topological artefacts (overlaps, small gaps) for display on Leaflet. The geometry has not been simplified beyond what is necessary for web rendering: it is not suitable for technical or legal uses requiring the original geometry.

Note on Umbria. The regional metadata also associates the layer with DGR no. 940/2025: to date we have found no verifiable confirmation from an external source for this specific measure. The other resolutions in the row (501/2019, 959/2021, 761/2023) are confirmed by regional sources and by independent technical-legislation bulletins.

Known gaps. Aosta Valley and the Autonomous Province of Bolzano do not appear in the file because they have never designated Nitrate Vulnerable Zones on their territory: they are the only two Italian administrations, out of 20, not to have identified any — not missing data still to be obtained. Source: ISPRA, four-yearly report under Article 10 of Directive 91/676/EEC, 2020-2023 cycle, which counts 18 regions plus the Province of Trento as administrations with designated NVZs; also confirmed by EU litigation on Article 3(4) of the Directive, which explicitly excludes Aosta Valley and South Tyrol as having no designated zones.
Designated but not yet integrated into the file, because no publicly downloadable vector data has been identified: Marche (DGR no. 1152 of 21.07.2025, which revoked the previous DGR 1282/2019 and 740/2023; the Region publishes only PDF maps, no layer in the regional Open Data list or WMS), Molise (DGR no. 1023 of 21.07.2006, within the Water Protection Plan; the regional mapping portal does not include the NVZ among its published themes), Basilicata (DGR no. 407/2020, updated by DGR no. 322/2024; the Basilicata RSDI exposes over 600 layers across two regional GeoServers queried directly, none of which relates to NVZs) and Calabria (DGR no. 301 of 28.06.2012, confirmed unchanged by DGR no. 119 of 31.03.2021; only a PDF risk map is available online, and the regional geoportal's Open Data section is flagged "under maintenance", with data obtainable only on request to centro.cartografico@regione.calabria.it). For all four, the designation exists and has been verified: only the open data in a usable format is missing.