10th April 2012

ICSA sheep chairman Paul Brady said that the critical thing regarding the EID system is to retain the derogation for lambs going direct to factories.  “There is no logic to putting an electronic tag into a lamb that will be hanging up next day.”  Mr Brady was responding to reports that the Minister is to tighten up on re-tagging of sheep, effective from June 1st 2012, which will mean, in practice, a push for full electronic tagging in stock sold in marts.
 
Mr Brady conceded that the current situation in marts is leading to confusion and there are issues for the buyers of store lambs.  “The producers who buy big numbers of store lambs will welcome electronic tagging of animals sold in the mart as it will make their job easier when they are selling on to factories or elsewhere.  Currently they are either re-tagging or facing up to a lot of reading and writing which is not ideal in terms of labour or accuracy,” he concluded.