Staghouwer wants to fight barn fires with bespoke work

Compartment to prevent barn fires is impractical or ineffective for some livestock farms. This is apparent from the initial findings of the University and Wageningen research. Agriculture Minister Henk Staghouwer (ChristenUnie) therefore wants to see if customization is possible in legislation to fight barn fires, such as fire detection and extinguishing systems.

The minister writes this in response to parliamentary questions from the Party for the Animals about the lack of measures to protect animals from barn fires.

Wageningen University and Research has been commissioned by the Ministry of Agriculture, Nature and Food Quality to conduct research in various farming systems and sectors on the impact for farming on the compulsory compartmentalization of the technical area with at least 60 minutes of fire-resistant material. The Dutch Safety Council gave its opinion in March last year on reducing barn fires.

The compartment is not possible for all stables, expects Staghouwer. Examples are cattle sheds where the technology is not limited to a separate area, but runs through the whole shed, or where the technical area is placed outside under a roof.

With the personalization research, the Minister of Agriculture “absolutely does not want to diminish the purpose and effectiveness of the measure”, but “at the same time also prevents us from forcing measures without the desired result”, says -he.

In order to best fight barn fires, Staghouwer is also looking into inspection regulations, such as the compulsory annual visual inspection of an educational nature and the compulsory three-year or five-year inspection of electrical and solar installations.