THE Victorian Government today announced $930,000 of new projects to support the adoption of electronic sheep and goat identification.
Visiting Sheepvention at Hamilton, Agriculture and Food Security Minister Peter Walsh said the funding was for projects that demonstrated the benefits of adopting an eID system for sheep and goats.
“This funding will contribute to projects including the establishment of demonstration farms, wool and sheep meat production trials, and workshops where producers can learn about the on-farm benefits of electronic identification,” he said.
“Electronic tags can be read accurately in a fraction of a second to simplify the recording of fleece weights, live-weight changes and information about health and reproductive performance.
“Trial work the Department of Environment and Primary Industries (DEPI) is showcasing here at Sheepvention confirms electronic tags offer considerable time and labour savings, and vastly improve tag reading accuracy.
“This funding will also be used to further support installation of scanning equipment in Victorian abattoirs, to refine scanning systems in saleyards, and to identify new cost-effective readers and hook designs that can track carcases from slaughter to chiller.”
The State Government is contributing half of the new funding, with the remainder to come from the Sheep and Goats Compensation Fund.
Mr Walsh said the adoption of electronic ear tags for sheep and goats was also a critical and necessary step for enhanced biosecurity protections.
“An efficient identification and tracking system for sheep and goats would better protect all livestock industries from the devastating consequences of a serious exotic disease outbreak, like foot and mouth disease (FMD),” he said.
“We have been warned that Australia’s current paper-based system for sheep and goats is not adequate, and that we should move to an electronic system like the National Livestock Identification system (NLIS) for cattle.
“The Victorian Government wants to ensure adequate systems are in place to protect our valuable livestock industries.”
- More in this week's Stock & Land August 8 edition