A petition calling for an increase in the age above which sheep carcasses have to be “split” is being launched on Monday July 22 at the Farmers’ Union of Wales Pavilion alongside the main ring at the Royal Welsh Show, Llanelwedd, Builth Wells.
Under current EU requirements the vertebral column of sheep aged over 12 months, or having one or more permanent incisor teeth erupted, must be removed - also known as splitting - which represents a significant and unacceptable cost for the Welsh sheep industry.
FUW livestock committee chairman Dafydd Roberts said: “The removal of vertebral columns adds significantly to the cost of processing carcasses, meaning that animals over 12 months old or with one or more erupted first permanent incisor are worth considerably less than other animals.
“The fact that first permanent incisors can erupt well before an animal is 12 months of age also means that a large number of animals are devalued unnecessarily.
“The precautionary approach which underpins the requirement is now completely outdated and it is clear that the risks of moving to a more proportionate approach are vanishingly small.”
Mr Roberts said the FUW had long maintained that removing the requirement to split carcasses altogether would represent a negligible risk.
However, following a resolution from the union’s Gwent branch, the FUW is campaigning for a modest increase in the age at which carcasses must be split so that only carcasses from animals with an erupted second pair of permanent incisors should have to be split.
“Second permanent incisors erupt at between 18 and 26 months, so such a change would be very minor, but would nevertheless represent a significant reduction in costs for the industry.”
Mr Roberts said the petition called on the Food Standards Agency to seek to raise the EU age limit for vertebral column removal to an age whereby the trigger for removal is the eruption of the second pair of permanent incisors.
He also criticised the FSA for not allowing more cost effective methods of complying with the current rules to be used in the UK, despite such methods being used on the continent.
“While it is the EU which is responsible for the current rules, and we believe that they should changes those rules, the FSA are preventing the use of more cost effective methods of compliance which are used on the continent.
“This is totally unacceptable, and it is high time the FSA moved to allow the UK to use the more cost-effective approaches used on the continent,” Mr Roberts added.