Victoria stands alone on eID for sheep, goats

As thousands of sheep and lambs from drought-hit areas of New South Wales and Queensland enter Victoria, the question is – does it make Victoria’s eID legislation ineffective?

Under Victorian legislation, all sheep and most goat breeds born in Victoria from January 1, 2017, must be identified with an electronic tag before being consigned to a saleyard or abattoir.

From March 31 this year, all electronically tagged sheep must be scanned in saleyards with tag information, along with the Property Identification Codes (PICs) of the vendor and purchaser, uploaded to the National Livestock Identification System (NLIS) database.

No such rules apply in any other state.

Today, Victorian Minister for Agriculture, Jaala Pulford, announced that from January 1, 2019, electronic sheep tags would be available to Victorian producers priced from 55 cents.

Ms Pulford said Victoria was the first jurisdiction in Australia to transition to mandatory eID for sheep and goats.

“What was a bold plan only two years ago, is now becoming an integral and accepted part of the day-to-day work for sheep and goat producers, saleyards and abattoirs,” Ms Pulford said

“Victoria took the lead in transitioning to the electronic identification of sheep and goats to provide trading partners with increased confidence in the safety and origin of Victorian products.

“This reform serves to protect and enhance existing market access and expansion to profitable local and export markets.”

According to Ms Pulford, since March 31, 2018, more than 760,000 sheep had been scanned by Victorian saleyards and uploaded to the NLIS database.

Since November 2016, more than 18 million electronic tags had been sold, and she said producers across the state had been using the new technology to record and access detailed data.

Australian Livestock Saleyards Association (ALSA) president, Stuart McLean, said the system would be enhanced if all states were involved.

“Victoria has always supported a national approach to net the real value in the system regarding biosecurity and productivity,” Mr McLean said.

Mr McLean said ALSA went through pre-planning prior to the introduction of the laws in Victoria “to ensure there were no hiccups”.

He said there was initial hesitancy but saleyards were now achieving high reading rates and industry acceptance was “very positive”.

There was a level of interest from other states about how the Victorian system had been introduced, and there was an awareness that the introduction of the system elsewhere was “inevitable”, Mr McLean said.

The requirement for better information by consumers will drive a new system, he said.

Mr McLean said there were around 3.5 million sheep in other states that had tags, “they just don’t read most of them”.

Some saleyards interstate were already investigating the installation of eID infrastructure, he said.

ALSA chief executive, Mark McDonald, said readability levels at saleyards were at 80 per cent and up to 90pc in some yards.

Mr McDonald said it wasn’t a bad process to get the system working in one state before rolling it out to other states.

The Victorian Government had done a good job to support and get the system up and running, he said.

He said the non-existent introduction of the system in other states was also about a lack of funding.

“The Victorian Government found the money and provided tags at a reasonable price and funded scanning equipment and software development,” he said.

Mr McDonald said the next step was the introduction of electronic National Vendor Declarations (NVDs).

Victorian Faramers Federation Livestock Group president, Leonard Vallance, said the transition to the eID had gone pretty well.

“We support the transition to an electronic NLIS,” Mr Vallance said.

“This is a good outcome for Victorian farmers who will still enjoy the cheapest electronic tags in the nation by far.

“The slowness of other states to change is starting to impact on the transfer of stock into Victoria.”

There were large numbers of sheep coming into northern Victoria, but that would level out as time went on, he said.

Mr Vallance said the future was the transfer back to the producer details from the kill floor at the processor end.

“Information is king and more information leads to better decisions,” he said.

He said there were farmers who had installed auto draft already and selling according to growth rates.

“When we progress to the next stage, fleece weights in the shearing shed, will result in a big jump in productivity,” Mr Vallance said.

Ms Pulford said eID was providing sheep and goat traceability and protecting Victoria’s $6.7 billion livestock industries, which included sheep meat and wool products worth more than $2.5 billion.

In addition to the traceability benefits, electronic tag technology provided processors with the opportunity to provide accurate provenance details, better manage products to meet market specifications and provide information that will drive greater efficiency across the supply chain.

All Victorian sheep processors started scanning electronically tagged sheep from December 31, 2017, supported by infrastructure funded through the Victorian Government’s Transition Package.