Local councils in Gelderland have been building houses near goat farms despite repeated warnings of a greater risk of pneumonia for locals, an investigation by local broadcaster Omroep Gelderland, Follow the Money, and the NRC has shown.
Since 2017, some 3,000 new homes have been built near goat farms in the province and 120 are set to be built in the village of Rossum in Maasdriel, at 400 metres from a farm with 1,800 goats.
Apart from 120 family homes, Maasdriel is building housing for the elderly in the same location, despite an even greater risk of potentially lethal pneumonia for this group.
The local health authority told Maasdriel council about the risk of pneumonia for people living near goat farms, based on several reports going back to 2016, and other, more recent risk evaluations.
The research by public health institute RIVM found that people who live within a two-kilometre radius of a goat farm run a greater risk of contracting pneumonia, resulting in dozens of deaths each year.
Some 1.5 million people live close to a goat farm and researchers calculated this results in an extra 1,200 to 6,600 cases of pneumonia each year. Some 100 to 600 people end up in hospital and the disease causes 20 to 100 extra deaths.
The provinces of Gelderland and Noord-Brabant declared a halt to new goat farms in 2017 following the warnings but in Gelderland local councils allowed another 1,800 homes to be built within a 1-kilometre radius of goat farms and 300 within less than 500 metres in the years after that.
Nationally, some 10,374 houses were built within a one kilometre radius and 2,362 within a 500 metre range in the same period.
The GGD said it had warned the local councils “dozens of times” to no avail. According to the provincial authorities, local councils are not bound by the GGD’s recommendations and can decide for themselves where to build.
Maasdriel council said the decision to build near a goat farm was “a political one”. “We decided the need for more housing outweighed the health issues for future inhabitants,” a spokesman said.
MPs have said they are concerned about the health risks posed by goat farms for people living nearby and have called on the government to take action. The cabinet is currently working on new rules about safe distances for new builds.
