sjk:

That'll be the next thing so it can aid defra in fining farmers.

 

Nothing would surprise me, and I mean NOTHING! By the way, great line, Jacobus

 I wonder how long with the rise in rural crime it will be before they make us fit LoJack systems to the animals as well as the machines

 

 I was wondering if the use of EID has resulted in any obvious decline in sheep numbers.  Are modifications being made per sheep producer's requests, are most farmers still opposed, and are there any positive stories to tell.

 

I am a director of the Canadian Sheep Federation and taking part in an RFID study here in Canada.  There is a lot of opposition to mandatory RFID in British Columbia, where the flock size is 35 and most sheep are direct marketed ( lamb to abattoir, custom cut and wrapped, sold by farmer to consumer)

 Any comments?

Barb

 Hi Bccanada

The rules have only been in place for the last 3 and a half months and the rules only apply to lambs born this year most of which haven't been born yet and most of which won't be tagged until July or august. I don't think any effects can really be observed yet. If you ask again in October or November then we will have been through the main lamb trading season so will have some idea of how thing will be affected.  

Hi bccanada, as wee man says it's early days yet, but I think the whole thing will get abandoned in less than 2 yrs as it will be such a shambles and a waste of time and money.

I am now at the point of having to decide what ear tags to order and from whom. What do others think are the 'best' make of tags for a) staying in for those ewes I shall keep or sell as stores, and b) cheapness for slaughter lambs.

For lambs for slaughter this year I shall put a single eid tag in one ear because Hereford Market say so. On the other hand I am told that Welsh Markets will take a single NON eid tag. (To be fair Hereford say they MIGHT also take a single non eid tag but are not yet sure)

For those animals I shall sell as stores I shall put an eid tag in one ear and an ordinary tag in the other.

For all stock born before Jan 1 this year. I shall keep the single non eid tag.

Am I doing the right thing?

This is what amuses me! The one place with all the reading kit will be markets - maybe two if some abattoirs get it as well.

Lambs for slaughter can be sent to either with a single non electronic HOB tag, as long as they are slaughtered before they are 12 months old. Therefore, only breeding stock will be electronically traceable - not food chain animals....where's the sense in that?

I am tagging my lot with double tags (1 EID, 1 non EID) whatever their destiny, it saves farting about with different sets of tags. I have single tagged with the non EID tags for now, and will insert the matching EID tags when the lambs are bigger. I have already had to cut one out because the lamb split her ear catching it on the creep feeder, and another the pin on the tag snapped whilst tagging a wriggly lamb. So already I have to order 2 replacements and i've only tagged 22 lambs!

Peter, your tagging sounds fine, as long as the single tagged lambs born before 31st Dec '09 go on before 12 months old, otherwise you'll have to double tag them (both non EID) Deep joy!   

I shall be tagging everything with a Cox slaughter tag ( about 7 pence each ) for now and will cut them out of the ones I decide to keep for breeding in the autumn and replace with 1 eid and a matching 1 non eid. This probably isn't allowed, but stuff them, this is the most sensible way of doing it with big numbers.

By the autumn hopefully I will know which tags are good and not so good and will have a better grasp of how things are going to work.......if at all !

crazysheep:

Peter, your tagging sounds fine, as long as the single tagged lambs born before 31st Dec '09 go on before 12 months old, otherwise you'll have to double tag them (both non EID)

I think you'll find that any sheep born after 31.12.2009 and kept beyond 12 months will need full EID.

crazysheep:

Therefore, only breeding stock will be electronically traceable - not food chain animals....where's the sense in that?

I'm sorry, I must have missed it - has there been a new EU directive that says all EU directives must be sensible?

I've used Ritchey tags for a number of years now and been very happy with them.  The only snag is that you have to order through a dealer.  Our nearest (that we've got an account with anyway) is Countrywide.  Having discussed on the phone with Ritchey staff exactly what I needed to order, I wrote it down and took it in to Countrywide.  The person there tried to dissuade me from ordering Ritchey tags and it transpired that three people from the branch had been on a training day to learn all about EID organised by Cox Agri.  They had all the Cox bumph and order forms - but handily no pictures of the tags so you could not see what style each was.  Anyway, I insisted on the Ritchey tags and my order was copied out and I was promised it would be faxed to Ritchey the same day.

In speaking to Ritchey they had promised to supply the small visual tags as soon as they got the order so they would not be held up by the backlog for EID tags.  A couple of weeks later, having received nothing I rang Ritchey who said they had never received my order from Countrywide.  On ringing Countrywide I discovered that the person doing the order was off sick.  I took my order into the store again to find that there was no-one in who knew about tags.  It seemed that my order was never processed because nobody bothered to find out what work in progress was on the sick person's desk when they went off (for three weeks).  My order was faxed off that afternoon after I insisted and sat next to a member of staff while they did the order and put it through the Countrywide system to get an order number. 

That was 26 February and the visual tags were dispatched by Ritchey on 3 March.  I haven't had the EID tags yet but on my Countrywide February statement I have been invoiced for all of them.  When I queried this I was told that because I had asked for them to be posted direct to me this was normal practice because Countrywide would not know when I had received them.  I did suggest that they would receive a dispatch advice and invoice from Ritchey but this didn't seem to be of interest. 

I had given up using Countrywide for most supplies because they seemed to have got pretty chaotic but switched back to them this winter for bagged feed because a new area Rep was quoting much better prices than the competition.  If other dealers are as well organised as Countrywide tag companies like Ritchey, who don't do direct sales, may well find they are losing out to the likes of Daltons.

Because of the delay with the tags all but the last 8 lambs have been tagged with a hotchpotch of old (illegal) tags which will be replaced in due course with the correct visual tags.  The ones I have ordered have the UK flockmark on the female and the individual number on the male.  I plan that any going to slaughter can just have the number cut off the tag.  (I have been told by one of the many tag manufacturers I have spoken to that this is illegal but I can't find anything in the regulations to say it is)

The EID tags I have chosen are Ritchey's RD2000 which can have a separate flag with management (or in our case, breed society data) printed and which can be retrofitted over the EID tag with castration ring pliers.  Using this, anything sold as pedigree can have the flag fitted and anything sold as unregistered can be sold without.

I am a fourth year student at Harper Adams and currently writing my honours research project on "The Effects of Implementing Sheep Electronic Identification on the UK Sheep Industry" and hoping to get farmers, markets and abattoirs views on this matter. If you could follow the link below to complete the questionnaire which is only thirteen questions long and should only take a few minutes to complete. http://www.survey.bris.ac.uk/harper-adams/henryhunt Thank you very much Henry Hunt

Moderator's note

Will respondees please note that the final question is about the reduction or increase in the amount of work which will be brought about as a result of EID. To score 1 means you think there will be a great reduction in the amount of work and 5 a great increase. If you think there will be no change score 3.

Politicians and bureaucrats are desperately worried about all kinds of nasty things and so they only make rules to make our lives better. But I do wonder sometimes, as when I put EID tags in some ewes and lambs I have moved to fresh pasture off the holding.

I notice that, because of the new tags and applicator I have got a cupboard of old tags and applicators that are now useless.

I have 150 tags and two applicators.

If each of the 80000 sheep farmers have the same the nation will be throwing away 12 million ear tags and 16000 applicators. Based on the cost to me o19p and £7 respectively the cost is around £3,56 million.

I expect in reality the figure is much higher, and if we then add the cost of the 108 millions tonnes of carbonised paper wasted when the movement documents were changed (based on my own stock and raised in a thread last year) we have a tidy sum.

I reckon that sum would have gone some way  towards paying off the pension funding deficit of the bureaucrats who came up with the ideas.

There are benefits however. EID can give useful management information for those flock owners who want it and it did keep the bureaucrats and IT analysts busy for a time.

eid is a disaster and will benefit no one except the tag salesmen.

Peter Wells:

if we then add the cost of the 108 millions tonnes of carbonised paper wasted when the movement documents were changed (based on my own stock and raised in a thread last year) we have a tidy sum.

You do realise that there is yet another version to be used from Jan 2010, don't you Peter?

glasshouse:

eid is a disaster and will benefit no one except the tag salesmen.

Sorry, glasshouse, wrong target.  EID is the only practical way in which consignors (farmers, markets etc.) of large numbers of sheep can meet the movement recording and reporting requirements coming in from 2011. 

Whilst it is an EU requirement that either individual numbers (breeding sheep and slaughter sheep over 12 months) or batch within batch flock number data (slaughter lambs) will have to be recorded in holding registers and on movement documents, there is no requirement that this data be recorded by the authorities.  In England, anyway, Defra have said they will not set up the necessary database to keep a national record so, from Jan 2011 when this data has to be recorded on AML1, Trading Standards will not actually be doing anything with the data we send them - thus rendering the whole edifice useless!

All to satisfy some arcane compulsion in Brussels that the movements of individual animals must be recorded even though there will be no benefit to animal health or disease control.  As you so correctly say, the only beneficiaries will be the tag and reader manufacturers and suppliers, and I bet the former are all in the far east!

Jacobus:

You do realise that there is yet another version to be used from Jan 2010, don't you Peter

Yes I do and so I doubled the amount of carbonised paper I calculated was wasted last time they altered the layout of the forms, from 54 to 108 tonnes. However, given that the cost of paper has risen 30% in this last few months however, the cost of 108 of five page carbonised must run into the £millions.

 I don't know about you Jacobus but I feel impotent against the sheer idiocy of the ruling elite as they handle these types of issue and the sheer waste of resources at a time when they are making TV adverts telling us to recycle this and that, turn off our lights, eat less, drink less, give up smoking, join a community group, give to Oxfam and generally hand over our lives to the Labour Party.

Then you come along, and demonstrate that EID (except for those who could have installed it for management purposes anyway) is a total waste of money and does not even add one iota to the chances of curing or preventing human disease.

What are to make of Defra, the RPA, Trading Standards, Natural England (and its Scottish, Welsh, N Irish and, no doubt its Falklands)  counterpart?

I have now made myself depressed and although I shall get over it, I always do, there is no wonder that suicide rates are higher amongst farmers than they are amongst bureaucrats or politicians.

 

 

Trading Standards does allow you to fax AML1's to them. This doesn't save on paper but it does on post!

boveyfarmer:

i could understand EID if you could send the movement to Trading Standards electronically. allas no!, we have to send a bundle of paper to county hall, everytime we shift sheep about the place.

i just hope the stuff is recycled, cos they must have heaps of it

Peter you are quite lucky with Hereford Market as the Welsh buyers could come and buy your 2010 Lambs with non EID and they could then upgrade that tag to an electronic set of double tags and keep the lambs beyond 12months of age, the English buyers wouldnt be able to do this (another crazy idea, welsh, england and scotland having different rules).

 If I was you anything being sold from 2010 should have a Single EID batch tag, that way English buyers could upgrade to double tags if they want to keep them over 12months.

 People are still sending 2010 lambs to market with 2009's tags, IMO these animals should be turned around and remain unsold, otherwise no-one is going to take this legislation seriously until someone starts taking 3% of peoples SPS payments, then its all too late

SDM:

another crazy idea, welsh, england and scotland having different rules

Well isn't it a requirement of devolved resposibility that to just accept a common standard would be unacceptable.  If you've got the power to be different then you MUST use it.  Anyway, you've got duplicated offices and armies of civil servants which have to be kept occupied, and paid for!

SDM:

 People are still sending 2010 lambs to market with 2009's tags

 

So what ! Only difference is that 2010 tags have only the UK number whereas 2009 tags have UK number plus individual number. Simple solution.....just ignore the individual number. What's the point of wasting good tags ? They all go in the bin at the abattoir anyway ! In any case, who can prove they weren't born in December 2009 ?