Barn fire
This can lead to the death of animals, release of toxic fumes, and financial and material damage for insurers, owners, employees and nearby residents.
Often there are no fire extinguishing devices present, and other safety measures are often foregone because of the financial cost to the livestock company, and one usually does not take potential accidents into account in administration.
The death toll was 192,862 animals, including 27,851 pigs, 196 cattle, 164,000 poultry (rounded estimate, mainly chickens), 8 horses, 7 goats and a few rabbits.
[40] Air washing installations, which have been mandated by the government since 2012 for many animal husbandry companies in order to reduce ammonia emissions, are flammable because of electricity.
[40] However, a motion to that effect, tabled by Esther Ouwehand (PvdD) and Dion Graus (PVV), was voted down by a parliamentary majority of VVD, D66, CDA, CU and SGP.
[43] Farmers' lobby group LTO Nederland opposed obligatory sprinkler systems, arguing these were allegedly insufficiently tested and too expensive, particularly for smaller enterprises, and because 'most barns would never experience fires anyway'.
Activist group Varkens in Nood ("Pigs in Distress") objected against the optional nature of the proposed measures, and called for extra legal demands.
[51] Since 2009, the Dutch inventors Peter Berlang and Sjaam Hira, in collaboration with the Southeast Netherlands fire brigade and Wageningen University, developed the cable system Stable Safe.
[41] In 2016, a farm in Echt, belonging to the only pork production chain in the Netherlands with a triple star rating from the Dutch Society for the Protection of Animals's "Beter Leven" certification mark, experienced a barn fire, but because the pigs could escape the building, none of them died.
The group holds vigils near burnt-out barns to commemorate the perished animals with flowers, candles and minutes of silence, calls on the national and local authorities to take stricter measures, and on citizens to make their consumption pattern more animal-friendly by eating less or no meat.
[58][59][37][60] A similar initiative was undertaken by activist group "Eyes on Animals" after the barn fire in Oirschot, claiming the lives of 10,000 pigs in April 2016.
[63] Varkens in Nood launched a citizen's initiative to impose a general professional ban for Adriaan Straathof, owner of De Knorhof, which was signed over 40,000 times, meaning that Parliament had to discuss it.
This also explains why northeastern and midwestern states account for the largest number of reported barn fires involving animal deaths: New York (31), Pennsylvania (29), Michigan (28), Minnesota (26) and Wisconsin (23).
[111][112] One of the National Fire Protection Association's building codes (the NFPA 150) covers specifically animal housing facilities: barns, but also laboratories, kennels, zoos and others.
In addition to recommending detection equipment that is currently missing from most installations, the NFPA advocates prevention measures, such as training for employees, inspections and the reduction of combustibles present in and around the facilities to limit the risk of destructive fires.
