The cost of producing pigs and poultry could soar if the EU agrees to overzealous proposals on pollution, the NFU has warned.

Plans to revise the Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control Directive (IPPC) mean many small and seasonal farms could be hit with costs totalling thousands of pounds in order to meet legislation.

Originally meant for heavy industry, IPPC could push up the cost of staples such as pork and chicken as producers are lumbered with more restrictions.

NFU president Peter Kendall, who will meet leaders in Brussels to urge them to reconsider the plans, said the changes would bring a ''plethora of additional bureaucracy'' on existing IPPC businesses.

Kendall said these are all big concerns for the NFU, particularly as these changes come very shortly after the phasing in of the poultry and pig sectors into IPPC in early 2007 and it is certainly too soon to evaluate the effectiveness of the current measures.

These proposals include plans to lower the thresholds for poultry, the concept of equivalent nitrogen excretion rates, the extension of IPPC controls to off-site manure spreading, and the inclusion of some on-farm feed mills and feed mixers as well the extension of controls to glasshouses with combustion boilers.