DEAR SIR: In last week’s Irish Farmers Journal it was reported that Minister Creed announced that there will be no requirement for the electronic tagging of lambs as part of the new sheep scheme.

The article outlined that the present derogation for lambs moving off the farm of origin direct to the factory won’t require EID. This is welcome news for sheep farmers, in particular lowland commercial producers who will save a euro per head just using the slaughter tag.

This is a major breakthrough for lowland producers who slaughter almost all their lambs, both ewes and rams.

What’s unclear from the article is what the minister said about all other movements, ie movements of store lambs off the farm of origin either to another farm or to the mart.

One thing that the minister has already stated publicly is that there will be no added costs associated with the scheme so to place any requirement for the introduction of EID on traditional store lamb producers would indeed be an added cost.

This added cost would be almost totally borne by hill lamb producers who traditionally have to offload these light hill lambs into the store market in the total absence of any guaranteed outlet.

I trust that the measures-based costings proposed by the minister will be fair and reflect the farming systems for both lowland and hill and that the resources necessary to deliver each of these measures will be sufficient to cover implementation costs.