Rollout of sheep and goat electronic ID to cost at least $350m

The federal and state governments are under pressure to work out cost-sharing arrangements on an electronic tag rollout for sheep and cattle.

Victorian farmers have used the stamp duty they pay on sheep and cattle to subsidise electronic ear tags, but that’s not an option in other states.

Rolling out sheep and goat electronic identification nationally could cost up to $400 million, according to a report commissioned in the wake of last year’s Indonesian foot and mouth disease outbreak.

At the height of the Indonesian outbreak, the nation’s agriculture ministers declared there was an “urgent need” to work with industry towards mandatory implementation of national individual electronic identification (eID) for sheep and goats in each jurisdiction by 2025.

The Federal Government responded by awarding PricewaterhouseCoopers Consulting $656,428, in August last year, to deliver a Livestock Traceability Report to the Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry by January 11.

The report is yet to be released, but a key source within the NSW sheep industry said PwC had put the cost of the national rollout in the range of $350 million to $400 million.

So far the federal government has committed $46.7m over three years towards the national rollout.

A Federal Government spokesman said “this funding is a significant contribution” and “livestock traceability is a shared responsibility of industry and Commonwealth, State and Territory governments, and all parties have a role in its implementation.

But NSW Farmers Association president Xavier Martin said that sum was nowhere near enough.

NSW alone has 24.7 million sheep, with the national flock topping 76 million.

“Users of eID reported their (on-farm) costs ranged from $40,000 to $70,000, and with 66 per cent of producers’ surveyed saying they will need to modify infrastructure on their farms, the costs of the total rollout are going to be significant even before the cost of tags and readers are taken into account,” Mr Martin said.

NSW Agriculture Minister Dugald Saunders said the NSW Liberal and Nationals Government had invested $3.5 million to date “in ensuring we get this reform right”.

“We also are continuing to work with the Commonwealth Government to finalise a cost-sharing model to support the broader roll out of the mandatory electronic identification for sheep and goat producers in NSW.”

In Victoria, which is the only state to have fully implemented eID for sheep and goats, the rollout was funded using some of the $40m the state has accumulated in stamp duty revenue on sheep and goat sales to subsidise tags, plus $17m from the State Government for saleyards and processors to install scanners and other technology.

NSW has no such duty on livestock sales.