Next month will be crunch time for Scotland’s sheep industry, when European Union auditors arrive to check sheep ID recording.

Failure to satisfy the auditors that the Scottish system of recording only batch numbers when sheep are moved might mean pen-and-paper recording of millions of individual sheep IDs at an estimated cost of £20 million. "We have to be at the top of our game when the auditors arrive on 24 January," said Bob Howat, the NFU Scotland vice-president, yesterday.

"We have to show that the Scottish sheep identification system works and that we can deliver. Double-tagging and individual recording would be a massive downturn for the industry."

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Source: Scotsman.com, Fordyce Maxwell
December 22, 2004

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