Funding to soften eID blow but farmers still say it will fail

New South Wales farmers say the mandatory eID tag system for sheep and goats is flawed and will fail, but they will take the 76 per cent discount on tags.

New South Wales farmers say the mandatory eID tag system for sheep and goats is flawed and will fail, but they will take the 76 per cent discount on tags offered today.

NSW Agriculture Minister Tara Moriarty announced the program, which will provide discounts from November 1 this year until October 31, 2025, or until funding is exhausted.

Southern NSW prime lamb producer Tony Rutter said electronic tags were not going to work in the industry, but it was a something producers could not stop.

However, he conceded he was already using electronic tags, at a cost of around $3.50 each, in his operation to support the current record keeping process within his flock.

From his own experience, Mr Rutter said it wasn’t unusual to replace up to 20 tags a week or yard the lambs up and find that tags had fallen out.

Mr Rutter, who has also worked as a sheep and lamb buyer, said he imagined the logistics of reading the electronic tags of more than 50,000 sheep and lambs at a weekly Wagga Wagga sheep and lamb sale were enormous.

“I think it will be very hard to mange as an industry,” he said.

“We will welcome any discount that is offered, because nothing it seems, is going to stop this.”

NSW Farmers president Xavier Martin.

Mullaley producer and NSW Farmers president Xavier Martin said the funding was a positive step as the industry transitioned towards electronic tagging.

However, he emphasised it was in fact government that had plans for a traceability system and it needed to be properly rolled out for producers.

There is just eight months looming before eID becomes mandatory for sheep and goats and NSW Farmers wanted to emphasis to the government that traceability needed to be achieved without high costs.

He said more funding was needed from both state and federal government budgets to help producers fully implement traceability systems for sheep and goats.