15/07/09 - NSA Reacts to Good and Bad News on EID Battle
National Sheep Association ( NSA) has welcomed the news that the use of so called ‘Critical Control Points’ for reading electronic ear tags was agreed to at meetings yesterday in Brussels. The agreement will save many sheep farmers significant amounts of money and trouble in coping with the new rules and it will reduce the overall cost to industry of the regulation by many millions. For many farmers it will mean that they will not have to now consider purchasing ‘reading’ equipment and will not face the same level of challenge in recording individual identities of their animals. However this welcome news was negated by the extremely unwelcome news that in order to secure this much needed flexibility Defra had been pushed into agreeing that they would not seek further concessions ahead of the regulation being introduced. NSA Chairman of Council Jonathan Barber said ‘NSA is pleased that the continual efforts of the organisation to ease the burden of this regulation have been rewarded by this flexibility. It is very sad that it is so difficult to achieve even the most basic and common sense pieces of flexibility, but that reflects the environment in which these regulations are being discussed. It is important now that sheep farmers start to understand what this regulation will mean for them and how concessions such as this might help them cope’ Angry at the decision by Defra not to further challenge the regulation in return for securing this flexibility, NSA Chief Executive Peter Morris said ‘NSA is totally appalled that Defra officials and Ministers representing all parts of the UK have found themselves in a situation where to achieve this outcome they have agreed to stay quiet on all other parts of these regulations ahead of 2010. If this is an example of the sort of relationship that exists between UK, the EU Commission and other member states then there are some deep rooted problems which need to be recognised and addressed. Surely principles of democracy and the right to represent the interests of citizens of individual member states are compromised when the detail of regulations are agreed in this manner. Everyone knows that the UK sheep industry is the biggest in the EU and produces far more high quality sheep meat than any other country. It is the UK industry that will be the hardest hit of any in the EU by the introduction of these pointless rules, yet it is the UK that has to shut up and now seemingly just silently accept what is coming. Regardless of that NSA will continue in all parts of the UK to oppose this regulation at all levels and will continue to fight for many changes through the remainder of this year and into 2010'. |
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