All stock face electronic tagging

The country's 10 million cattle and two million deer could all be individually identified by electronic tags within three years, at a cost of about $30 million.

Electronic tagging of New Zealand's 40 million sheep could follow, provided the technology proves successful in cattle and deer and can be shown to work in Europe, where it will be introduced by 2007.

Meat and Wool New Zealand chairman Jeff Grant said yesterday markets were demanding traceability after recent food scares and New Zealand needed to take action to protect its $13 billion in agriculture exports.

Final decisions about the scheme were still to be made, but Mr Grant said it was possible an identification system could be mandatory by 2008.

"Since bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) arrived, it has forced international interest, in a regulatory sense, for countries to introduce an identification system," he said.

"Secondly, supermarkets are competing with each other to tell consumers they provide the safest food chain."

Mr Grant heads a farming and Government working group looking at the issue and said New Zealand ignored what markets were demanding at its peril.

Key, high paying beef markets like Europe and Japan would disappear to countries like Brazil, which has 180 million beef cattle all of which would be individually identified by 2007, if New Zealand did not follow suit.

Mr Grant said it was planned to introduce off-the-shelf equipment rather than develop a tailor-made system. It would cost between $2.50 and $3 a tag.

- nzpa