Agriculture Minister’s EID stance supported.

Penri James, Plaid Cymru’s Westminster candidate, has lent his support to the growing campaign against the European Union’s intention to introduce Electronic Identification (EID) tags for sheep and goats throughout member states.

Plaid Cymru’s Minister for Rural Affairs and Ceredigion AM, Elin Jones, has already stated that she does not agree with EID but that it is likely to be pushed through by other EU countries.
Plaid Cymru has been campaigning to scrap these proposed regulations with Jill Evans MEP recently joining Scottish and Irish counterparts to launch a campaign against the plans.

In support of the campaign, Plaid Cymru’s Penri James said:

“I am very supportive of the campaign being led by Plaid Cymru against these proposed electronic tags and I hope that the European Council will a take the opposition to this regulation into account. I fear that this will be a costly project to implement and individual farmers will bear the expense.

“During the recent Plaid Cymru Conference, I discussed this matter with our European MP, Jill Evans, and I know that she will be pressing the case for EID to be scrapped in Brussels. However, as Elin Jones AM stated, despite gaining concessions in the negotiations so far, there is little support to put EID on hold among other EU states”.

The dilema facing Rural Affairs Minister, Elin Jones, is that a failure to implement legislation passed in Brussels would lead to financial as well as other penalties on Welsh farmers. First among these would be a top slicing of Single Payments as a defacto fine. This is clearly an unwise an unacceptable route to take. The battle for some derogation powers lies in Brussels and I hope they will gain some success. Common sense over the ages has seen sheep being managed on a batch and flock basis, there is no need to change this sensible operational policy.

This is an example of how they look (from http://www.shearwell.co.uk/ )