In the 1970’s a new method of housing the animals was developed where concrete slatted floors were placed over concrete slurry tanks for the animal waste. This was adapted as the ‘norm’ for the winter housing of cattle and in Ireland, for example, in the late 1990’s the National Herd consisted of 6.5 million animals, of which 2.74 million were on 16,000 farms containing 100 or more animals and a further 3.27 million were on 69,000 farms with between 20 & 99 animals. In 2003 there were an estimated 63,000 slatted floor systems in use.

Although offering the farmer a cost-effective means of housing the animals for this period of time, it also presented major challenges in the following areas:

• Floor surface is hard and the animals no longer have the floor surface of the field to which they are accustomed.
• There is a natural aversion of the animals to this hard floor surface on a number of fronts increased injuries to the legs & claws of the animals.
• Floor surface becomes slippery from the animal waste so that there is a high tendency for the animals to slip.
• Increased injuries
• Slippery
• Flat surface, hence gravity not effective in clearing waste
• Animals not Physically or Mentally comfortable/confident.

Because of the hard surface the animals tend not to rise to get food & water as often, due to fear of injury from this process. As a result, the animals would not thrive as they would in an outdoor situation.

Although the animal waste is intended to reach the tank underneath through the gaps in the slats, there is a high percentage of the animal waste which is retained on the flat concrete slats, so that the animals are dirtier, which increases the pathogen load on carcasses in the slaughterhouses.

There is increased ammonia emissions from the waste deposited on the slats. Apart from affecting the health of the animal, ammonia emissions are a major pollutant.