Farming unions from across the British Isles are set to lobby against current sheep tagging EID rules.

In a meeting in Brussels on Tuesday the NFU, NFU Scotland, NFU Cymru, Ulster Farmers’ Union and the Irish Farmers’ Association presented the case for reform of the system to their industry counterparts. They called for the European Commission to review the rules in relation to tolerance, cross compliance and tagging for movements within a holding.

At the meeting, m ember states including France, Germany, Sweden and Spain outlined the problems their farmers were facing in achieving an acceptable level of accuracy. They also shared their concerns over the way the current rules can penalise farmers under cross compliance for failures in technology that can be entirely out of the farmer’s control.

Following the meeting, NFU livestock board chairman Charles Sercombe commented, “This is a real step forward as we build a broad base of support to convince the European Commission that EID tagging does not do what it set out to achieve. The fact that farmers in other member states are struggling with the same problems as we are reinforces what we have been saying over the past few months. Having colleagues across Europe in agreement on this issue sends a strong message to the Commission that the current rules need to be changed.”

The union has said that, although it recognises the need for “a workable practical system of traceability and disease control,” current regulation is interfering with this by proving too complex rules and basing itself on technology which can be unreliable, with adverse effects for farmers when technologies fail.

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