A double header

Electronic Identification (EID) of Sheep

See my earlier post on 5 Jun 09. The Farmer's Guardian has reported that the UK has failed to win support for the proposed changes to the EID rules that had been put forward by the Scottish Government. The idea was to avoid having to tag sheep until they left the holding of their birth and therefore reduce the tagging burden and its associated bureaucracy.

This seemed to be a very reasonable proposition but now the fight has to continue to introduce some sanity into these proposal before the regulations come into force on 1 Jan 2010.


Birds of prey project

The Scottish Government has reported that The Partnership for Action Against Wildlife Crime Scotland (PAW Scotland) has provided funding for RSPB Scotland's 'Eyes to the Skies' initiative which uses satellite tracking to monitor the movements of red kites.

All this high tech input must be costing a packet and it does lead to the question, 'Is there not a better way?' I would like to think that we could put this funding to better use and so avoid a Big Brother situation where we will all be tagged and monitored, with CCTV on every hilltop?