Sheep and goat tagging could destroy agriculture industry says Liz Lynne

5.35.58pm GMT Wed 28th Jan 2009

The Liberal Democrat Agriculture Spokesperson for England and Wales in the European Parliament Liz Lynne MEP has said today that potential EU legislation requiring individual sheep and goats to be electronically tagged could have devastating effects on the UK's farming industry.

The West Midland's Euro-MP's comments came after a meeting with fellow MEPs and farming experts that is being seen as a last ditch attempt to prevent the new laws coming into place.

Liz met with senior representatives of the National Farmers Union (NFU), as well as members of the agricultural community from around Europe to look at the impact the measures could have on sheep and goat farmers.

Liz Lynne has been a long time campaigner against the Electronic Identification (EID) proposals and in September last year, signed a written declaration in the European Parliament calling on the European Commission to scrap the plans. Unfortunately the declaration did not get enough support from other members of the Parliament.

Speaking today Liz highlighted the damage that EID could cause:

"Individual tagging is extremely expensive and many farmers I have spoken to say they simply could not afford to do it.

"Sheep farmers are already struggling to break even due to low livestock prices and the economic crisis; this would be yet another serious blow and could see hundreds of farmers going out of business.

"We already have strict rules on batch tagging sheep and goats. These new rules would give no added security whilst increasing costs to impossible levels.

"I sincerely hope that both the European Commission and the European Council will see sense and put a stop to these ineffective, damaging and ridiculous proposals."

ENDS

The full text of the 2008 written declaration can be found at:

http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML+WDECL+P6DCL-2008-0068+0+DOC+WORD+V0//EN&language=EN]