A £12 MILLION cattle identification plan has been announced by the Minister for Agriculture. The scheme will enable consumers to know the origin of dairy and beef products.
At the official opening of the Horizons food exhibition at the RDS in Dublin, Mr Yates said the plan, which will involve computerisation, ear tagging and "passports" for every animal, could be enacted within two years.
Declaring that agriculture had now reached the stage where "the consumer is king", Mr Yates said consumers now wanted to know where their food had been produced and under what conditions.
"The unrelenting demand by consumers for total information on the origin of the food they eat right back to the farm must be met," he said. "Farmers and food processors ignore these trends at their peril. In fact, developing quality assurance programmes which are both transparent and comprehensive is the single most effective way of assuaging consumer worries about food."
Mr Yates said the new system will have the backing of national and EU law and would involve a double identification tagging system, of animal and farm, which would be computerised.
He said quality assurance schemes, already being operated by An Bord Bia and some farmers, would become universal and the Department would use a carrot and stick approach to implement it.
The benefits of producing food which can be traced back to the farm would bring premium prices for the producer. Failure to be involve in the scheme would bring a lower price and a reliance on EU schemes.
Teagasc, the agriculture and food advisory service, which will be involved in setting up the scheme, said it had developed an implantable electronic transponder (IET) to trace Irish animals.
"When this is in place in the animal, a hand held antenna sends radio frequency bursts and the transponder returns a coded echo signal. This signal is unique to each animal and can give a clear record of what has happened to that animal from birth to slaughter," said a Teagasc statement.
"Two aspects of the device are essential. It must stay in place on the animal for life and must be easily recoverable at the abattoir."
The statement said Teagasc researchers have been developing a transponder in a bolus, a torpedo shaped pill of metal and plastic, which will be fed to the animal in the first three days of life. This will lodge in the stomach and provide a complete history of the animal.
Mr Yates said if this bolus system proved itself in research it would be used by the Department. However, at this stage, he was pressing forward with the computerised system.
Mr Yates described the Horizons event as the largest and best organised food display ever assembled in the State. Buyers from over 30 countries who buy food for over a billion consumers will visit.
"I believe this event has the capacity to increase our exports by over £3 billion over the next few years when the rest of the world sees what we have to offer," he said.
Yesterday, over 400 Irish food buyers attended the event at which the leading 100 Irish food companies are exhibiting.
In addition, 10,000 Irish food retailers and caterers are visiting the show and IFEX, an international food exhibition, is also being held.