Farmer put nappy on cow in European Union Commission hillside gradient pooing protest

The EU Commission wants to regulate where cows can poo in the name of protecting ground water, but farmers in Bavaria, Germany, aren't happy. The Bavarian Farmers Association (BBV) is calling foul on new rules proposed by the European Union Commission to ban cow dung from hillsides with a gradient more than 15 percent.



The goal is to avoid water pollution by stopping nitrates from leeching into ground waters. "We demand that Germany stops this ban," said Upper Bavaria BBV president Anton Kreitmair. "Slurry and dung are not pollutants, but valuable fertilizers." The protest has no placards or slogans - just Doris the cow, wearing a plastic sheet tied around her rear end by farmer Johann Huber.

"We have no regular Pampers, the stores don't sell any big enough," Huber said as he set about his task. Doris and her colleagues graze almost exclusively on areas that would be forbidden under the EU rules in the town of Gmund, on hills above the Tegernsee. The new regulations would essentially restrict cows to grazing in the valleys of Bavaria's alpine farms.


YouTube link.

"In Bavaria alone, more than half of vineyards would no longer be able to fertilize with cow dung and 10 percent of the fields and meadows would no longer farmed," said Kreitmair. Doris's poo, however, has little impact locally. Steffen Schulz, spokesman for the EU Commission in Munich, said that many German waterways are already over the acceptable limit of nitrate contamination through over-fertilization.