Western livestock producers are not convinced on eID

At the start of question time at an information session on the issue at Broken Hill yesterday, the Pastoralists' Association of West Darling (PAWD) president Terry Smith asked the question to those in the room: who was in favour of the mandatory roll out?

Not one of the 80 pastoralists in the room put their hand up.

Mr Smith put the same question to the pastoralists after speakers including Agriculture Minister Dugald Saunders and the Department of Primary Industries (DPI) group director of livestock systems, Dougal Gordon, spoke about why eID was being introduced, and still no one raised their hand.

While many pastoralists said eID was a done deal, they still had concerns over costs, traceability, NVDs not uploaded by processors, direct to slaughter movement options and controlling feral pigs.

PAWD also outlined the policy it would support in a flyer that was distributed about what they wanted which included:

PAWD councillor Lachlan Gall said pastoralists were adamant that a mandatory roll out of eID without the adoption of "commonsense" tag free movement options in specific situations or improvement of the existing NVD and NLIS database systems was not on, and those in charge of the eID roll out still had not presented a convincing case for using electronic tags in all circumstances.

"Imposing what constitutes major, expensive permanent and potentially unnecessary changes on the sheep and goat industries without accepting sensible recommendations put forward by those who are ultimately paying the full cost for it one way or another has most definitely got their back up, and inflexible decision making is eroding respect for the process," Mr Gall said.

The Land asked Mr Saunders whether he got his message across at meeting in which he replied: "I think so, there are lots of intricate questions about the weeds of this and I get that."

"The mood of the room...they don't really want change but there is an understanding that change is what needs to happen as far as biosecurity and traceability," Mr Saunders said.

"There will be support."

He wanted to reiterate that if you were not tagging goats then that would not change.

This was despite that when he first made the announcement last year about the mandatory national roll out that there would be no exemptions when it comes to eID.

Related reading: Dugald Saunders backflips on goat electronic identification scheme

"If you are not doing tags for goats you won't have to change, that's something I wanted to reiterate as you heard me say it several times today," Mr Saunders said.

When asked about the costs to producers and whether the NSW government would make any funding announcements ahead of the election, Mr Saunders said he was working through the process to try and get some funding on the table.

"We already have $3.5 million for saleyards and processors because they will be the first part of the chain," Mr Saunders said.

"The main concern from everyone is cost to their business the tag subsidies isn't something that works."

He said a national tag tender was the way to bring costs down.

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