The magic box.
Since the inception of our intensive milk and meat production, livestock farmers have had more manure than they can get rid of. About fifteen years ago, the Columbus egg was presented: co-fermenters.

In May, June and July, the three environmental services audited 33 of the 34 manure digestion companies in Friesland, Groningen and Drenthe — the results were shared with the provincial states of the provinces on Tuesday. Traces of amphetamine were found in 23 of them, and 27 had excessive levels of heavy metals, such as copper and zinc. The spores were found in the so-called digestate, a mixture of animal and industrial residues into fertilisers. This is not allowed by law, because too high steel values (and drug residues) are dangerous for nature, animals and people. The processing plants mix manure with organic products — including corn waste, grass and husks.

This mixture goes through the fermentation device — into new, sustainable products such as biogas and digestate, a type of fertilizer that farmers spread over their land so that plants and crops grow better. Van Dekken fears that the drug and metal residues end up through the digestate and are scattered across the farmland. The Netherlands has around three hundred manure processing companies. They often use the new organic fertilizer for their own farmland and sell the rest. The 23 companies that found amphetamine residues were informed at the end of September that they are not allowed to sell the produced manure and must store it. As soon as the manure silos are full, the fermenters must be stopped.

For years, the State thought it had a solution for the Dutch manure surplus with manure digestion companies, but that picture is constantly changing. Time and again, inspection services find that manure processors do not comply with the rules.

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