Scots putting case for ‘more proportionate’ sheep EID system

NFU SCOTLAND and others will be back in Brussels today urging Commission officials to speed up the timetable to review sheep EID regulations and adopt a Scottish proposal that would only require sheep to be double tagged electronically when they leave the holding of birth.

In a meeting facilitated by George Lyon MEP, and accompanied by representatives of the National Sheep Association Scot- land, NFUS president Nigel Miller will encourage European Commission officials to take on board the growing evidence regarding sheep EID gathered in Scotland over a period of more than three years.

The Scottish tag read rates, recently published by SCOTEID, show standards must reflect real experience of using EID tags and that a system of electronic identification can be introduced when sheep are leaving the farm and still deliver robust traceability.

Mr Miller said: “Scotland is in a unique position within Europe in terms of providing the Commission with a body of credible evidence on sheep EID.

“That evidence has been generated over several years and is based on Scotland’s own sheep EID pilot and two years of statistical analysis of sheep tag read rates through the system Scotland has put in place.

“The figures are clear justification for reform of the existing regulation. Both the 2010 and 2011 sta- tistics on sheep electronic tag read rates in Scotland, published by SCOTEID, expose the limitations of both the technology and the tags.

“In that regard the figures show the need for Europe to put in place a more proportionate compliance system.

“There is also real evidence, also from Scot EID, that even with compromised read rates on electronic tags our system delivers excellent traceability and meets all necessary requirements in terms of food safety and disease control. That should be recognised by the European Commission and receive a level of backing and support from it.

“For Scottish sheep keepers we need to move compliance requirements away from being based on filling out paperwork and the flock register to simply focus on tagging standards at movement and then properly recording those movements of sheep.

“We hope to encourage officials to move the review process for the sheep EID regulation on so we can also look at adoption of our long-standing Scottish option of only electronically double tagging homebred ewes when they leave the farm.

“That common-sense approach would allow home-bred ewes to be managed on farm with a single flock identifier and significantly reduce compliance problems, ear tag damage and ear tag retention issues.

Mr Lyon said: “The NFUS proposal to allow farmers to tag sheep only when they leave the farm is the only sensible solution.

“We will also explore alternative courses of action with MEPS which will include removing part of the EID regulation from the new rules on cross compliance in the CAP reforms.

“This is a serious alternative as it would open up the opportunity of removing the threat of penalties on farmers for being less than 100% accurate in their on farm sheep register,” he added.