A farm leader has claimed that the individual tagging of sheep, now a legal requirement, would not have prevented last year's outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease here. Seán MacConnell Irish Times Agriculture Correspondent reports.
Mr Laurence Fallon, the chairman of the Irish Farmers Association national sheep committee, is leading the campaign against double tagging of sheep and the complexity of the new sheep register.
This week hundreds of sheep farmers handed back the flock register to Department of Agriculture offices in Dublin and Galway in a protest over their complexity.
Under the new regulations forced through last year, farmers must place a flock tag and an individual tag in the ears of all sheep and lambs and keep a detailed back-up register.
Mr Fallon, who is one of the State's foremost sheep farmers, said sheep farmers were committed to the idea of traceability and it was important that consumers knew that.
"However, we are against the complex system which was rushed through last year based on the cattle system and we want it changed," he said yesterday.
He said there was no necessity for an individual sheep identification tag if there was already a flock tag in the animal's ear. "Cattle are sold as individuals but in the case of sheep they are sold in numbers and the system is too complicated. Sheep tags get lost and when that happens there are immense problems. When sheep die on mountains or commonage, there are also complications and a huge amount of paperwork to be done," he said.
They had no problem with having a flock tag but individual tagging is totally unnecessary".
A spokesman for the Department of Agriculture and Food said sheep exports were worth €275 million annually; €20 million was paid to farmers in ewe subsidies and the individual identification of sheep would remain in place.
"If those who oppose the scheme show us where there are real problems with it, then we will look at it but as we see it, the system is working, is giving confidence to the consumer and is being operated well," he said.