The question of how, rather than why, has dominated a feisty discussion between agents and agriculture department staffers over the soon-to-be-commenced scanning of electronic sheep tags in saleyards.
The meeting, which was held Tuesday in Hamilton, was the first of three called this week for the state’s largest saleyards to inform agents of their responsibilities under the electronic National Livestock Identification system standards when scanning begins March 2018.
“(The department) is not telling agents or selling centres that they must scan once or twice,” said Agriculture Victoria’s Ben Faye.
“It’s up to each of the saleyards to devise a system that best suits its own operation and apply the standards as per the regulation.
“And what the regulation states is that the selling agent must ensure the animals are correctly tagged. The details from the scanned tags and the number in the transaction are matched to the property details of the seller and the buyer, and those details provided to the saleyard operator within 24 hours of the sale.
“And the saleyard operator then has 24 hours to upload the details of the sale to the database.”
However, the greatest difficulty that agents foresee is that suitable technology – both hardware and software – is not yet available to enable them to achieve the standard within the allotted timeframe.
“We need it to operate if it is not there,” said Kerr & Co principal Michael Kerr.
“We are not against its introduction. We recognise its value and its importance to the industry but we need the time and the technology to make it work, and we haven’t got that.”
Mr Faye said it was widely agreed that introducing effective scanning of sheep in saleyards, especially the larger yards, would be the most difficult aspect of the new regulation.
However, he said, it was broadly acknowledged that saleyards were the most at risk area where animals were traded, and there are financial packages of support available for agents and saleyards to develop, trial and install the necessary technology.
On the point of suitable technology, Mr Faye assured agents there is hardware and software available and capable of completing the tasks required. However, agents like Heath Templeton, Southern Grampians Livestock, argued from his contact with scanner manufacturers they had assured him the technology was not available to perform at the scale required at Hamilton.
When pressed on the allocation of funds for saleyards it was asked if there were overruns in infrastructure costs “who would pay”.
Department staffer Warren Straw said given the required infrastructure is mandatory the intention is government would.
