22 SEPTEMBER 2016
ICSA president Patrick Kent has said that he is increasingly concerned about the ongoing delays and lack of clarity around the tagging approval process for cattle. “ICSA is fully in favour of competition for the supply of cattle tags as the best way of ensuring value for money and importantly, in ensuring that farmers have choice in terms of making up their own minds about durability of tags.
“ICSA therefore welcomed the acceptance by the Department that a tender process which involved years of monopoly was no longer appropriate. Moreover, it was hard to stand over such a regime in the context of the single European market.
“However, ICSA is concerned that the Department has left it very late to get the approval process completed in good time and is now depending on emergency Brussels approval. Worse, is the fact that there seems to be no clear plan on the logistics of dealing with tagging to cover animal ID rules, the BVD testing process and the DNA sampling for genomics.”
“ICSA understands that the Department is today meeting potential suppliers of tags. It is very concerning that this process is still not solved with the deadline of November 1st only a few weeks away. Farmers need to have all tagging options in place in good time and farmers cannot be held accountable for tagging delays if the Department has not got its own approvals regime sorted.”
ENDS