Changes to sheep tagging scheme are a good start
Minister of State Liam Alyward said the Department has asked the IFA to clarify a number of points made in that document.
The implications of any adjustments to the system can impact on a number of stakeholders, such as producers, processors, marts and tag suppliers.
These will require careful and methodical study, before the Department is in a position to give a definitive reaction to the IFA submission, he said.
Minister Alyward earlier confirmed it has now been decided to simplify the reconciliation element of the sheep flock register for 2002, and that it should in effect be a census of the flock.
This means that by December 15, 2002, flock owners need only to gather and count their flock; ensure all sheep are tagged; replace any lost tags; and record the numbers of replacements in the register in the normal way. This will mean it would not be necessary to determine or record the numbers of the lost tags.
Minister Aylward confirmed that any further adjustments/refinements will fall to be introduced in 2003 rather than this year.
In the meantime, all flock owners should continue to use their existing Flock Registers and operate all other aspects of NSIS, as it now stands.
Minister Alyward said that, based on the Department's monitoring of the operation of the NSIS since it was introduced in June, 2001, he believed all aspects of the system are generally working well.
The National Hill Farmers Association, which made a submission to the Department on the issue last September, welcomed the changes to the scheme. But the IFA Sheep Committee chairman Laurence Fallon said the Department has not addressed the fundamental problems associated with the NSIS.
He acknowledged the Department had made a gesture towards simplifying the scheme in scrapping the
individual reconciliation element for a flock-based reconciliation approach.
This move would certainly simplify what was an impossible requirement to reconcile individually identified sheep.
But he claimed the Department had not really considered the IFA proposals for a workable and practical system of sheep identification and recording.
He said the IFA proposals were based on a permanent flock tag for all breeding sheep on the farm and an individual tag for all animals entering the food chain.
In addition, he said the IFA has put forward proposals for a practical and convenient sheep register involving a summary of the dispatch documents which record all sheep movements.
Mr Fallon said the Department seem intent on maintaining a complex and unworkable individual identification system which adds nothing to traceability over and above the more simplified proposals from the IFA.
The current system is extremely complex and creates a heavy bureaucratic burden on sheep farmers, without any benefits over and above the more simple and practical proposals from the IFA.
Mr Fallon said the Department will have to seriously address simplification of their complex sheep identification system and move towards a more workable and practical system.
He said the scrapping of individual reconciliation is a move forward. The issues of individual tags, the sheep register and the cutting out of tags on movement will now have to be addressed.
