This item was published during the term of a previous administration that ended in April 2007
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Changes to sheep and goat identification system
11/08/2005
A consultation exercise into some minor changes to the current Scottish system for sheep and goat identification was launched today.
The consultation will seek the views of industry on the best way to comply with new European legislation.
The proposed legislation will allow keepers to continue with the current single baseline system, and with movement and replacement tags instead of applying double tags to all sheep and goats born after July 09, 2005. Double tags will only be required for export animals born after this date.
The consultation period will only run for four weeks to allow for the introduction of legislation during October.
Launching the consultation, the Rural Development Minister said:
"This consultation exercise will allow us to seek the views of our sheep and goat industry to arrive at a practical solution on how we can best implement the minor changes needed to our current system.
"It is important we incorporate these changes into our legislation, because failure to comply with the current regulations could lead to our temporary derogation being withdrawn and double tagging introduced.
"The Scottish Executive will write to all keepers in the autumn explaining the revised system in full."
Notes to Editors
The European Regulation 21/2004 introducing double tagging came into force on July 09, 2005, however the Commission are content that we will not have legislation in place until around mid October 2005.
The United Kingdom has temporary derogation (exemption) from the regulations in order to keep the current single tagging system which, we believe, allows for greater traceability.
EU Auditors will re-visit the UK in December 2005 to assess whether the forthcoming changes provide the traceability required under 21/2004.