The first phase of the pilot study, which was funded by the Scottish Government and co-ordinated by the Scottish Agricultural Organisation Society (SAOS), involved 209 farms, six marts and three abattoirs. Between July 2008 and April 2009, 36,000 sheep movements were read and logged to a central database.

Analysis of that database and supplementary survey information suggests that electronic reading takes between three and six seconds per animal, with an average read rate in excess of 96%, but that tagging takes around one minute per animal and requires the attention of two people.

Farmers involved in the trial remained concerned over the cost and practicalities of complying with the regulation, due to come into force at the end of the year, and concluded that for those working with large numbers of sheep the proposal is impractical. Anyone with an ounce of intelligence will conclude that a traceability system with a 4% failure rate is as much use as an ashtray on a motorbike.

The next phase of the pilot, costing £3m, will look into how the efficiency rate can be increased and develop protocols for non-reads (the 4% failures). It will also look at the introduction of scanning into markets and abattoirs and the importance of a national central database to log sheep movements.

NFU Scotland President, Jim McLaren, said: “To a lay person, a 96% accuracy rate may appear to be acceptable, but it is the 4% failure rate that calls the whole European requirement into question.

“Given that those farmers involved in the trial are committed to making EID work, it is highly unlikely that such a level of accuracy would be repeated when rolled out across all of Scotland’s seven million sheep. In Scotland, sheep traditionally move from farm to farm, from farm to market and from farm to abattoir. If there is a high level of inaccuracy, then it quickly unwinds the credibility of introducing such a system in the first place.”