Tasmania starts to look at sheep eIDS

The Tasmanian government has invested up to $250,000 to look at the introduction of eIDs, as it expects mandatory use of tags will be rolled out nationally in the next few years.

Tasmanian Red Meat Industry Development Officer Elle Davis said the Tasmanian Farmers and Graziers Association was first keen to find out how implementation of mandatory eID's had gone in other states.

"Of course we are interested to see how Victoria has gone about it, advantages and disadvantages, the process they used to mandate it, what worked and what didn't work," Ms Davis said.

From January 1 this year, in Victoria, all sheep and goats need to be identified with an electronic NLIS tag before leaving a property.

Ms Davis said once research had been done on Victoria, the TFGA would then be looking at other states.

"I have been working with stakeholders in numerous other jurisdictions who are at different points along this journey.

"In Victoria, they are already there, other jurisdictions have already done a review or are looking at starting one."

She said producers appeared to be generally supportive of electronic tags.

"I haven't received a large amount of feedback yet, I suppose we will do in stage one.

"Part of stage one is also looking at collecting case studies of producers who are already voluntarily use eID's on their properties, at this stage.

"I can only speak anecdotally at this stage, but there seems to be really good support for it in Tasmania.

"That doesn't mean there aren't people who aren't concerned about different elements of using them."