Reacting to the Minister for Agriculture’s announcement to introduce compulsory Electronic Tagging (EID) the President of the Irish Natura and Hill Farmers Association (INHFA), Colm O’Donnell has labelled it as another solo run by Minister Creed and his Department.”This announcement has connotations of the botched fodder aid package implemented by the Department which was contrary to what was agreed by the stakeholder’s action group and of little or no benefit to the effected farmers. This move to full EID needs the input of the farmers producing the lambs to advise on the most effective transition to introduce compulsory EID tagging. By picking a date as the 1st of October is right in the middle of the store lamb trading season, shows just how out of touch our Department is with the industry.
If they insist with the start date continued O’Donnell, tagging derogation’s to use slaughter tags for all store lamb movements between now and then will have to be given where these lambs are slaughtered after the 1st of October”.
The INHFA are calling on the Minister and his officials to engage with all industry stakeholders before progressing any further with the introduction date for compulsory EID if he genuinely wants to simplify the sheep tagging system and reduce record keeping requirements for sheep farmers.
