Is Europe reducing its ammonia emissions at the expense of the global environment?

Ammonia (NH(3)) emission abatement measures may be a requirement for the livestock sectors of many European countries in the near future. Some countries, e.g. the Netherlands and Belgium, already have legislation in place to reduce emissions. Slurry spreading is a large source of NH(3) loss yet offers the greatest potential for reduction by adopting new slurry spreading technology, viz. shallow injection and band spreading. In this paper we describe a series of experiments where NH(3) emissions are compared following slurry spreading with conventional splash-plate (SP), trailing shoe (TS), band-spreader (BS) and shallow injection (SI). These low trajectory spreaders reduced NH(3) emissions by an average of 85% (SI), 75% (TS) and 39% (BS) in comparison to SP. However, slurry injection by SI consistently increased N(2)O emissions in comparison to slurry applied by SP. The overall effect of SI on total N(2)O emissions, i.e. including secondary emissions following ammonia deposition, are discussed.