If you can credit it, from 1st January 2012 all sheep will have to have two numbered plastic tags inserted into their ears, one of which contains a micro chip so that the sheep can be identified electronically.
We are then required to keep a list of all of the individual sheep on the farm and keep this fully up to date and open to inspection at the drop of a hat. Reasonable? Ridiculous?? You tell me. Do you as a consumer need to know the exact whereabouts of each of the 16 odd million sheep that graze our green and pleasant land???
I do not want to make my blog sound like a rallying cry for UKIP, so I will put the politics aside for the moment and concentrate on the actual practicalities.
Firstly we have been using ear tags with just the farm ID on for several years now, and while it does little harm to tag a lamb just before it is sent off to slaughter (and indeed probably helps the supermarkets trace their meat back to source) it is a completely different proposition for a ewe to keep one in place for five years or longer. If they are lucky they get away with the tag gradually acting as one of those gruesome modern ear stretching “flesh tunnels” that are so popular with the younger generation. The unlucky ones get them caught in a fence or gorse bush and in a panic they pull back and promptly rip the tag back through the ear leaving it in tatters and flapping in the wind. And all this is done in the name of animal health.
The tags themselves cost around £1.50 per sheep and the fiddly task of matching the numbers of the non-electronic tags with the same electronic tag make the job of tagging a real pain. “So quit your moaning and get on with it” you might say - but here comes the rub.
I have lost two sheep so far in 2012, and despite finding the bodies fairly promptly neither still had their ears which are the carrion of choice for the local crow population. So although I know I am two sheep down - I don’t know which two and the only way to find out would be to get in the other 188 and cross them off the list one by one!
Were I to be inspected there would now be cause to deem my records as non-compliant and some of my Single Farm Payment (European subsidy) could be at risk. Cattle Identification has already been the major cause of fines for farmers over the last five years, and keeping track of a herd of cows is a doddle compared with a flock of sheep.
So all of this will become a major disincentive to keeping sheep at all, and I can confidently predict that as a direct result the national flock will shrink and supply of lamb will be much reduced. Add into this equation the drop of New Zealand lamb available as they shift to selling milk to the Chinese, and the price of your weekly lamb chop (if it wasn’t already dear enough) can only carry on rising.
