Different guidelines have been developed and are used in some European countries to define minimum distances that should be respected to separate livestock buildings from residential areas, these distances being considered necessary for odour dilution thus limiting nuisance from livestock production activities. The Austrian guidelines are presented and are in some ways similar to existing guidelines. An odour number is calculated using the following parameters: number of farm animals, their category and their housing system, characteristics of the outlet and the exhaust air velocity, the manure management inside and outside the building and the feeding strategy. Odour dispersion is first evaluated using the wind direction mean distribution at the site and secondly by evaluating the predominant local winds the last consideration is the legal claim of protection by the surrounding residential areas. This analysis results in a final protection distance dependent on the direction to the neighbors. This paper present the Austrian guideline and discuss the differences from Switzerland, Germany and the Netherlands guidelines.

The protection distances considering fattening pigs are compared graphically in the publication ( the protection distance as a function of the number of fattening pigs) and no trends can be seen of one country being consistently more restrictive than the other.