Time for Europe to turn words into action and reduce bureaucracy
"Give us sensible rules and we will follow them." This was the clear message to Assembly Officials who addressed NFU Cymru members in Meirionnydd on sheep movement and tagging, at a recent packed County Meeting.
NFU Cymru's County Chairman for Meirionnydd, Richard J Evans said, "Whilst the structure of our sheep industry and the size of our flocks means we would not cope with individual movement recording, having a set of overly complicated batch movements rules is not acceptable and does not benefit the consumers of our products in any way.
"The drive for individual sheep recording comes from DG SANCO in Brussels, which is the veterinary arm of the European Commission. It is high time that the Commission is true to its word in the stated quest to reduce bureaucracy and red tape. This can start by allowing the UK more leeway in developing sensible and workable rules on sheep movement and recording. Any breaches no matter how small currently attract a substantial loss of Single Farm Payment."
Mr. Evans added, "It is astonishing that Commission vets, who more than anyone should be aware of animal welfare, want a system implemented that necessitates the tagging of lambs that are sometimes only a few days old. The ears of such lambs are soft, making them more vulnerable to rip injuries. An example would be the requirement to tag young lambs before they move with their mothers from the enclosed fields onto common grazings. Not only is this not always good animal husbandry but is it we ask, really a necessary one, just because the regulations say so? After all lambs are strongly bonded to their mothers (who are tagged) for at least the first four months of their lives."
Another issue raised by NFU Cymru Vice President, Edmund Bailey, himself a sheep farmer in Meirionnydd, was fallen stock collection. "Now that it is proven there is no BSE in the sheep flock, this provides further evidence of the folly of not being able to bury fallen sheep on the farm they are kept. At a recent meeting on the future of the National Fallen Stock Company, a vet said that the risk of spreading a disease is virtually eliminated once that animal is dead. I told him that farmers do not bury live sheep, so what is the problem of on farm sheep burial away from water sources?" said Mr Bailey.
NFU Cymru remains concerned about the bio security risks of transporting fallen stock from farm to farm as a result of a collection service and remains committed to finding on farm solutions acceptable to the European Commission.
