A RIFT has developed between the National Sheep Association and NFU Scotland over proposals to trial electronic identification (EID) of sheep in Scotland next year.

Last week NFUS gave a cautious welcome to an announcement by the Scottish Executive at the Royal Highland Show that it was to seek clearance from the European Union to fund tagging of every lamb born next year with an electronic tag, in addition to a conventional one.

The Executive also indicated it would be prepared to fund other equipment such as scanners so that the system could be tested at strategic stages such as transportation, markets and abattoirs. That would mean that Scotland would be operating a different system from the rest of the UK. South of the border the system will be based on double tagging and batch recording movements similar to the system currently in use.

George Milne, development officer for the Scottish region of the NSA, lambasted those proposals yesterday. Speaking at a sheep event at Balbuthie Farm in Fife, Milne said: "We support the incoming rules for down south next year. We need to adopt that to allow cross-border trade. We also support an EID trial, but feel that a lot more discussion is required about what lambs need to be tagged and what systems are trialled".

According to Milne, one option that should be considered is that ewe lambs that require to be double tagged could have an EID tag fitted. That would allow large-scale trials to be conducted at the large ewe lamb sales. "That would highlight if the system is workable in year one," he stressed. "That way, money spent on EID tags in wether lambs won't be wasted."

"There is a difference of opinion between us and NFUS on how to put the trials in place", he conceded.

"The NSA is concerned that if every lamb is fitted with EID in 2008 then we will never go back from that. At some point we will have an extra cost of a tag of about 60p which is the equivalent of our promotional levy."

First Milk increases payments to members

First Milk will increase the core milk price it pays to its members by 0.5p per litre from July 1, 2007, to 18.3p. This is the fourth consecutive monthly move by the farmers' co-op, delivering a cumulative increase to members of over 1ppl, worth £20m.

First Milk has also decided to suspend its policy of withholding payment to members on over-quota milk, with immediate effect for the remainder of the current quota year.

That announcement came on the same day that The Co-operative said it had awarded 50% of its own cheese label business to the First Milk Cheese Company, equating to about 3000 tonnes annually. The Co-operative has an annual requirement for 6000 tonnes that had been supplied by Dairy Farmers of Britain, but it lost out when the contract was split between First Milk and Kerrygold.

Producers in the Highlands and Islands supplying First Milk creameries in Arran, Bute and Campbeltown now get a price rise of 1.75p to about 20p per litre as their returns are linked to cheese prices.