The tagging of every sheep in the State which was introduced following the foot-and-mouth crisis will remain mandatory here despite a rejection of individual tagging by the European Parliament. Seán Mac Connell, Agriculture Correspondent, reports.
During the week, MEPs voted to reject the EU Commission plan to tag individual sheep and bring the rest of Europe into line with Ireland.
They opted for a UK system of monitoring sheep of identifying flocks by tags, but not the individual animals.
The opposition to individual tagging was led by British MEPs who argued that the Commission scheme would cost UK farmers an estimated €96 million to put a 14-digit code number in both ears of Britain's 37 million sheep.
The parliament's opinion, which does not have legal force, has reopened the debate on individual tagging here.
The farm organisations, especially the Irish Farmers Association, led a major campaign against individual tagging on the basis of cost, not only in terms of money but also because of time taken to perform tagging on the State's population of over seven million ewes and lambs.
The IFA president, Mr John Dillon, said yesterday he was delighted with the decision of the EU Parliament to reject the EU Commission proposals for individual sheep tagging.
He called on the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Walsh, to block the Commission proposals at the December agriculture council meeting.
His call was echoed by Fine Gael's spokesman on Agriculture, Mr Billy Timmins, who sought a reverse of the current Irish system.
"Although food safety, consumer confidence and traceability is paramount, this new approach would not compromise any of these factors.
"Instead it would cut down on a lot of irrelevant and unnecessary work for farmers," he said.
But yesterday, a spokesman for the Department of Agriculture said individual tagging would remain in place. "There are on-going discussions at EU level, but our system is already in place and is working, providing a full traceability system for the Irish consumer," he said.
At its introduction in late 2001, Mr Walsh said Ireland might have been spared its one case of foot-and-mouth disease had the system of individual tagging been in place.