Mrs Down's Diary - Jan 13

Electronic identification of all sheep flocks.This will outdate the already compulsory system set up for tagging sheep and replace the current set of tags in our sheep's lugs with ones that can be read by an incredibly expensive, electronic tag reading system.

An unspoken requisite for this new system will be a high degree of IT literacy. Now I am perfectly well aware of how IT literate many farmers are. But many are not.

I know a lot of them. One very closely.

He views with horror the thought that the missus might have to be more involved on the book keeping side of the business than she is presently.

He has seen my book keeping style and is still taking pills for the headache.

Fortunately we can avoid the system partially this year as long as our lambs born this spring go for slaughter before the end of the year.

None of our current ewes can be sold for breeding unless they are electronically tagged, but they can go for slaughter.

The idea is to improve traceability for disease control.

Laudable but the current system is already doing that. If it ain't broke, don't mend it I say.

It's also going to put a stop to some friendly assistance that many farmers give to neighbours. "Will you just bring a few sheep to graze off our orchard, paddock rather large back garden." is a frequent request.

Can't do it now. The sheep will need to have electronic tags to record the movement and be taken, if the farmer does not have his own equipment, to a place, such as the local market, where they do.

All movements have to be traced, otherwise, joking apart, we will be breaking this wonderful new law.

The United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland produce more sheep than any other country currently in the European Union.

But, there are a lot of sheep and goat farmers in countries such as Malta and all the East European states that will be subject to the same requirements.

Remember we are a European Union. Why do I hear hollow laughter when I think of them and the French being as compliant as we are.

How it is going to be implemented for hill farmers I have no idea.

Or for example where you see sheep grazing a graveyard, then moving onto a village green, which quite a few do that I know of.

All the tests carried out so far have been far from conclusive as to this new systems effectiveness.

Tag loss, incomplete gathering of data and recording, for eg not picking up some of the data on every tag all spell out a flawed system which is expensive and has no proven benefit.

I suspect some very effective however, electronic sheep tag manufacturer lobbyists in the corridors of Strasbourg. More gravy train excesses. This time with mint sauce.