IRISH SHEEP farmers are hoping political support won in the Dáil last week will stop the introduction of mandatory electronic sheep tagging at the end of the month.
The Oireachtas Committee on Agriculture called for a derogation from the EU regulation which is due to become EU law on January 1st.
The committee decided to write to Taoiseach Brian Cowen, the Ministers for Agriculture and Health and the Irish EU commissioner, Máire Geoghegan-Quinn to seek the derogation to make tagging voluntary rather than mandatory. The decision came after a submission from the Irish Farmers’ Association, which said mandatory electronic tagging would drive many sheep farmers and marts out of business because of cost and animal welfare reasons.
The Irish Farmers’ Association president, Pádraig Walshe, said Ireland already had a sound and effective tagging system in place.
“In economic terms, compulsory electronic identification of sheep (EID) will hit the sheep sector for up to €50 million based on an output loss of 20 per cent or €40 million and EID costs of €10 million per annum as projected by the European Commission,” he said.
“In practical terms, with sheep EID tags set to cost between €2 and €2.50 per sheep, these costs are the equivalent to charging a cattle farmer over €30 to tag an animal,” he said.
Colm O’Donnell, a Sligo sheep farmer, said his flock had been used by Teagasc as an experimental base for tagging and in trials 12.5 per cent, or 25 of the tags on 200 sheep had gone missing.
“Not only that, but there was also damage to the ears of the sheep from the tags which could have developed infections because of this unsuitable device,” he said.
Sheep farmers faced severe penalties for losing tags from their Single Farm Payment, he said, by using an impractical system thatcould only work in countries where sheep were housed and not in the wild like Ireland.
Henry Burns, chairman of the association’s national sheep committee, said if imposed, the system would close down marts because they would have to invest over €15,000 for scanning equipment.
Meanwhile,in the aftermath of the recent flooding Minister for Agriculture Brendan Smith has extended the closing date for applications for the Damaged Fodder Scheme to December 18th.
He said he was giving the extension because of ongoing problems experienced by farmers in the affected regions, but warned there was no prospect of extending the deadline beyond December 18th.