New slurry deadline for pig farmers

THE country's biggest pig farmers have been given up to two years to find more landowners to take pig slurry on their land as fertiliser.

Government officials have made it clear that their survival largely depends on finding the extra spreadlands.

This has been confirmed by Teagasc. "The economic analysis for the pig sector is very simple - if farmers stop taking slurry, they will go out of business", the Oireachtas Joint Committee on European Affairs debate on the Nitrates Directive was told by Dr Seamus Crosse, Director of Agricultural Research in Teagasc.