NFU Cymru gives evidence on EID to rural development sub committee

In the absence of EID and Individual Recording of sheep being made a voluntary rather than compulsory measure throughout the EU from 1 January 2009, NFU Cymru has major concerns as to the impact that the implementation of this EU Regulation will have on the Welsh sheep sector.

This is the overarching message NFU Cymru’s Vice President, Ed Bailey, will give to the National Assembly’s Rural Development Sub-Committee when he presents oral evidence next week in response to its inquiry into EID (the Electronic Identification of sheep).

The Union will explain to the Sub-Committee members that the regulation was developed in response to animal identification and tracing problems during the UK Foot and Mouth disease crisis in 2001. However, since then, identification and tracing systems, disease recognition and emergency response have all improved significantly.

Ed Bailey said, "NFU Cymru is firmly of the view that the current system of individually identified animals, combined with batch recording of movements reported to a central database, domestic standstill arrangements and national disease contingency plans in the event of a disease outbreak are a more cost effective form of protection against the spread of animal disease within Wales.

"This system protected the UK livestock industry in 2007 when Foot and Mouth virus leaked from the Government owned laboratory in Pirbright and successfully prevented a repeat of the catastrophe the country suffered six years earlier."

NFU Cymru will provide written and oral evidence to the Rural Development Sub-Committee in its written evidence the organisation makes two recommendations on how the Welsh Assembly Government can support the Union’s lobbying in Europe:

• Firstly NFU Cymru request that through Ministerial contacts and Welsh Assembly Government staff in Europe meetings are held with representatives from other Member States to gather support for a review of regulation 21/2004.

• Secondly NFU Cymru requests that the Minister for Rural Affairs, in partnership with the other devolved Ministers, lobbies the Defra Secretary of State to request that he uses his influence to also gather support from other Member States and to bring our request for a review of the regulation to the EU Council of Ministers.

Ed Bailey concludes, "NFU Cymru has left no stone unturned in seeking a review of EU Regulation 21/2004. We are calling for this regulation to be re-examined accepting that the regulation may have been seen as a solution to disease control measures when first devised but that the industry has moved on significantly since December 2003 when it was originally agreed. NFU Cymru believes that any form of sheep and goat identification must be economically affordable, feasible and easy to implement. At the present time EID and individual recording are not practical, costly and do not work in a number of everyday situations.

"EID and Individual recording should therefore be made a voluntary requirement rather than a compulsory requirement. Where individual Member States and farmers see benefits in introducing the technology they would then be in a position to implement the technology with the support of government funding where possible.

"Other organisations may have given up the fight against the compulsory introduction of sheep EID and Individual recording but NFU Cymru strongly believes that if a regulation is wrong it will continue to say it is wrong and use every avenue, whether that be in Cardiff, Westminster or Brussels, to try and deliver practical and acceptable solutions."