Farmers have stepped up ordering cattle tags over the past week. Mullinahone Co-op says it is now receiving orders for over 40,000 tag sets per day and that this is on par with previous years. Nonetheless, the delayed start to ordering means overall sales lag behind other years.

Mullinahone remains the only applicant yet approved by the Department of Agriculture to sell tags. The Irish Farmers Journal understands that Cormac Tagging is likely to receive clearance by next week to start delivering tags to farmer customers. It has clearance for its Caisley tags – the delay has been about setting up the complex and secure IT system that can interact with the Department of Agriculture’s AIMS and traceability systems and having laboratories lined up to test tissue samples from its tags. The third applicant, Datamars, has clearance but has yet to put all support systems and facilities in place.