Mr. Michael Spellman:

Many of the questions were repeated as we went around the various members but I will address a number of them and Mr. Doyle will address the others. On the cost issue, we outlined what we have been told by the manufacturers. In Scotland, in particular, ScotEID carried out the best research available. That is being passed on to the Commission, which has brought in a voluntary system. The people who manufacture are saying that as of now it looks as if the additional cost will relate to the EID implant in the tag itself. The tags will look no different from the existing tags. They will not cause ears to fester and so on, as is the case with young baby lambs. That was a criticism of the introduction of the EID tagging for sheep. If the heavy tags were put into young lambs, they had a tendency to cause difficulties from a welfare point of view. It is likely that ear tags will be used for the electronic implant and the tags will be the same, except that the implant will be inside the tag. One would not know looking at the tag from the outside that it is any different from a conventional tag. The additional cost results from putting the EID in the tag.

We would have no objection to introducing a voluntary programme for one year - perhaps two years at most - but there is no point in introducing a half-baked programme because it will offer no advantages in respect of the export of stock, traceability and so on. If, for example, cattle which had the benefit of full traceability because they were electronically tagged from birth were slaughtered in a plant today and if the carcasses of animals with a weaker system of traceability attaching were included in the same batch, then it would be of no advantage to us. I am well aware that no change comes without pain. Some people will see this as an enormous change from what they have been used to and they will find it difficult to take it on board. The option is there for people to adopt the voluntary system today if they want and many are doing so but if a voluntary system was brought in with a definitive timeframe for when it will become mandatory, then there is no question that would be the best route to go.

There was a question about the programme introduced for sheep a number of years ago. When farm organisations considered the electronic tagging of bovines, many of them made a totally understandable comment.

If the bovine programme had been introduced before the sheep programme, there would have been far fewer difficulties with it. There have been more than teething problems with the sheep programme since it has been introduced. Now that breeding sheep must be compulsorily tagged, we are gradually getting over these difficulties. We believe it will be fully in place as a full mandatory programme shortly.

This programme is important in dealing with sheep theft. The only way the theft issue can be dealt with fully is if the tag used was a type of bolus or an under-the-skin implant. As has been said, the ordinary tag can be cut out, as rustlers do now. A bolus tag in the stomach of the beast or an implant under the skin, like one has with dogs, would cut out the issue of theft. With advances in technology, a full tracking device could be incorporated into this, allowing one to know where the animals are at any given time. That is one significant advantage that would come from this.

We have been in talks with the Department over the past while on this issue and it clearly identifies significant advantages from the scheme, particularly with traceability. As mart operators, this will eliminate much of the danger associated with staff manually reading tags. A farmer putting stock into a crush will often get a finger or arm broken as stock do not want their ears interfered with too much. All of this hazard would be eliminated by this proposal. It will not cost too much for an individual farmer to have a hand-held device for tagging purposes. If it were very expensive, it could be shared between neighbours. As for the insertion of the tag in question, the same applicator will be used.