EU lawmakers open battle against sheep, goat tags

By Jeremy Smith

BRUSSELS (Reuters) - British and Irish lawmakers in the European Parliament launched a campaign on Tuesday against a rule that would make electronic tags for millions of sheep and goats across the EU compulsory from next year.

Britain has by far the European Union's largest flock, with around 33 million sheep, roughly a quarter of the bloc's total. Spain follows closely, then Greece.

Last year, EU farm ministers agreed to introduce electronic tags by the end of 2009, part of a strategy to prevent epidemics of contagious diseases like foot-and-mouth and replace a system where flocks of sheep and herds of goats are only tracked when moved from farm to farm, sold at market or sent for slaughter.

British MEPs have condemned the idea and have launched a cross-party campaign to pressure the European Commission, the EU's executive arm that authored the law later agreed by ministers, to reopen negotiations to make tagging voluntary.

"The idea that 33 million sheep in Britain will be tagged by January 2010, it's frankly not going to happen. The Commission is living in cloud cuckoo land," said UK Conservative MEP Neil Parish, also chairman of the Parliament's agriculture committee.

"I do think the Commission has to come and see the effects of what they are proposing," he told a news conference.

The MEPs complain that the tagging scheme will be very expensive and difficult to implement, particularly in hillside areas. Their campaign against compulsory tagging is also supported by French sheep farmers, industry sources say.

While the European Parliament has no formal power to change the rules agreed by ministers, it has a history of generating enough pressure that the Commission does occasionally act.  Continued...