Farron calls for Government to oppose Electronic sheep tagging

3.00.00pm UTC (GMT +0000) Tue 24th Jun 2008

Liberal Democrat MP and Chair of the All Party Parliamentary Group on Hill Farming Tim Farron has today launched a bid to persuade the British Government to oppose the introduction of EU rules that will force farmers to electronically tag their sheep. The Government claims that this will aid disease control and make it easier to track animal movement. Mr Farron, however, believes this measure to be completely unnecessary, and will force farmers to reconsider whether they remain in the industry by knocking around 40% off their incomes overnight.

Commenting, Mr Farron said:

"Plans to force farmers into electronically tagging their sheep show central Government at its worst - farmers need a Government which listens to them and understands local needs, not diktats from Whitehall which ignore farmers' problems. There are concerns whether the electronic tagging system will even be reliable given the varied conditions throughout the supply chain, and yet the current ID and batch recording system works perfectly well. In addition, this is far more difficult to implement for hill farmers, whose sheep are often dispersed over a wide area.

"Every week we lose more sheep farmers due to the poor returns available for them, and yet the Government is still considering making their economic problems worse! Worryingly, this comes at a time when we should be encouraging farmers of all kinds in order to try and stabilise food prices in an attempt to mitigate the Global Food Crisis. If we see less sheep farmers and become less competitive internationally it will only increase the effects of the Global Food Crisis on Britain. The Government needs to seriously reconsider its sheep tagging proposals, and start to support food producers as a matter of urgency."