Mccornick getting his teeth into the problem of ‘ageing’ sheep

An appeal has been made to politicians for a more sensible, cost effective way of implementing a regulation imposed more than a decade and a half ago.

At that time, there was concern over the transmission of spongiform disease and the European Union imposed a regulation that required the removal of specified risk material (SRM) from the carcasses of all sheep slaughtered for human consumption.

The actual parts of a sheep presently specified as SRM vary between sheep that are aged under 12 months and sheep aged over a year.

In a letter to Defra Secretary of State Michael Gove, NFUS president Andrew Mccornick points out sheep are only identified as being older than 12 months through “time-consuming and inaccurate dentition inspections” of each sheep’s mouth to check for the emergence of permanent incisors.

“The proposed amendment would permit other methods to identify the age of sheep. This would give regulators the flexibility to use a method best suited to the UK industry.”

Mccornick stressed the proposed amendment would not change the current requirement in the UK to split carcasses of sheep over 12 months to remove the spinal cords which is one of the biggest costs to the UK sheep industry.

“In the UK it is an offence to remove the spinal cord from older sheep other than by splitting the whole vertebral column or removing a section of the whole vertebral column including the spinal cord” he said. “Other EU states only require the removal of as much SRM as possible, while in the UK, 100 per cent SRM removal is compulsory. However, that gold-plating comes at a significant additional cost to the UK sheep industry and, in our letter to Mr Gove, we have asked for the UK government to give domestic regulators greater flexibility in this area.”