|
Back to FMD Homepage
MEPs reject EC sheep tagging scheme
Editorial
Filed 21 Nov 03
www.land-care.org.uk
The European Parliament has rejected a proposal
from the European Commission which would have cost British farmers
an estimated £96 million per year (1). The highly controversial
EC plan was to tag every one of Britain's 37 million sheep with
a 14-digit chip (code) in both ears.
Under the EC proposal, every time a sheep or lamb
is moved, the farmer would have to manually write down and record
the identification number. If a sheep lost its tag, the farmer would
be forced to check every sheep in his flock until he discovered
the one that was missing so that an identical replacement tag could
be ordered.
At least one delegation from the EC has visited
hill sheep farms in Scotland to see for themselves just how impractical
- and unnecessary - such a scheme would be.
Although electron tagging systems are available,
DEFRA has still not reached agreement as to what should be included
on the chip, so that the necessary standardisation of such a tagging
system has not been established. The situation has of course not
been helped by the endless procrastination in making the decision
as to whether double and individual tagging of sheep was necessary
in the first place.
The European Parliament voted to adopt the batch
system currently used in Britain, where movement of flocks, not
individual sheep, are recorded. After all in tracing where a sheep
came from or went to in the event of a further outbreak of Foot
and Mouth Disease, the information that is required concerns the
identification of the respective farm holdings and not who the sheep's
brothers or sisters are.
However, sheep farmers
are not out of this particular wood yet. The proposals are to be
discussed at the Agriculture Council on 19th December.
This long running saga illustrates the inefficiency
of the EC bureaucracy and the gap that exists between what goes
on within the European Commission and the day to day practicalities
of running a sheep farming business. Over-regulation simply defeats
its own purpose.
© www.land-care.org.uk
References
1. Parish, Neil (2003). Conservative agricultural
spokesman in the European Parliament.
http://www.conservatives.com/news/article.cfm?obj_id=79976
|
