Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2003-11-18-Speech-2-316"
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"en.20031118.13.2-316"2
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"Mr President, the foot and mouth disease crisis of 2001 graphically and horrifically underlined the inadequacy of Council Directive 92/102/EEC on the identification and registration of animals, including sheep and goats. Therefore I broadly welcome proposals for a regulation reinforcing the provisions of that directive.
We do not want to go backwards and replace our current system – that is the official line, speak to the farmers if you want to hear what they have to say – with what amounts to no more than a flock identification system that will not give full traceability.
The compromise system would not allow the movements of an individual sheep to be traced. It would not provide any basis for scrapie control or genotyping, which has to be based on individual identification.
At this stage, Ireland is seeking an accommodation within the proposal to retain certain aspects of its current individual identification system pending the introduction of a compulsory electronic system. As colleagues have said, let us harmonise the objective but not necessarily the methodology. The long-term objective should be a cost-effective electronic identification system. In the meantime, there should be batch numbers for those countries who want them and individual tag numbers for other countries, like Ireland, depending on the scale of operations and the geographical factors involved.
I would like to sincerely thank the rapporteur and the shadow rapporteur, Neil Parish, for the excellent and cooperative work they have done to bring us to this point. I fully support the position adopted by the Committee on Agriculture and Rural Development on the proposals before us.
In theory all Member States favour an individual identification system, but there are two camps. Firstly those countries generally in favour of the proposals which, apart from France, tend to be the states with lower sheep numbers, including Ireland, and secondly those which maintain it would be completely impractical and too costly to implement an individual system in advance of electronic identification.
This latter group includes Spain, Portugal, Greece and very definitely the UK, where there are huge numbers of sheep and geographical factors amplify the considerable concerns of the sheep industry.
The Council presidency has now presented a compromise on the original proposals, which would drop all recording of individual sheep numbers until such a time as an electronic recording system is in place, and secondly would introduce compulsory electronic identification for sheep and goats from 1 January 2008, subject to a Commission report on implementation by June 2006. Thirdly, it would allow a derogation from compulsory electronic identification for Member States with flocks of less than five hundred thousand.
The official Irish position, ironically, is that we are in favour of individual identification on a manual basis because we introduced such a system in June 2001. We are normally the ones making justified complaints, and now I fully support my UK and Spanish colleagues and the case they are making on their particular circumstances.
However, in Ireland we are not in favour of the double tagging proposed, because this would result in a higher workload for flock owners and significantly increase the associated costs, such as tag replacement, without adding any value to our current system.
At the moment in Ireland, a permanent sheep tag costs 30 cents. Two such tags would be 60 cents, before taking labour costs into account, plus the replacement rate, which by definition is very high in sheep because of their grazing habits.
We have already been through the pain barrier and currently have an individual identification system in place. That gives us full traceability of sheep on an individual basis from the farm of origin to carcass. This system was introduced to ensure that Ireland operates to the highest standards of disease monitoring and control and is at the forefront in terms of consumer assurance and food safety. Most importantly for us in Ireland, it gives us a considerable advantage in relation to the export market."@en1
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