Northern Irish farmers are dishing out more than £700,000 due to poor quality ear tags for cattle.
The Ulster Farmers’ Union (UFU) estimates the figure at over £700,000 a year, because replacements have to be bought when tags are lost.
This is down to the poor quality and durability of identification tags currently approved for Northern Ireland, the UFU President, Barclay Bell, said.
The UFU believes that the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA) needs to look into a metal tag option. The Union has called the poor quality tags as unacceptable.
Farmers are looking at the introduction of a metal tag option, which could prove to be a a win-win outcome for both farmers and DAERA, according to the UFU.
Analysis by the UFU was carried out off the back of a DAERA-commissioned study, that was undertaken by the Agri-Food and Biosciences Institute (AFBI), to investigate cattle identification tag retention.
The study, which looked at the tag retention of 379,479 cattle born in 2007, indicated that on average 18% of the cattle had lost at least one identification tag over a six-year period.
Between 2013 and 2015, each year 11-12% of cattle had at least one ear tag replaced and over the three years 663,000 replacement tags were ordered, the study showed.
