IFA president Joe Healy and national sheep chair John Lynskey have reaffirmed IFA’s opposition to compulsory electronic identification (EID) for lambs and called on Minister for Agriculture Michael Creed to ensure EID is not a component of the impending new sheep scheme.

Joe Healy said: “Proposals from factories and others for the compulsory EID of lambs going direct to slaughter is an unnecessary cost imposed directly and only on farmers while returning no benefits to them.

“This has been received very negatively at farm level and Minister Creed must ensure that the existing derogation (for lambs) is maintained for sheep farmers.”

John Lynskey added: “Compulsory EID of lambs must be strongly resisted as full EID is impractical, unnecessary and extremely cost prohibitive in what is a severely low-income sector, both in lowland and hill enterprises.”