EU mandates electronic IDs for sheep and goats

The European Union has pledged to make life easier for both farmers and putative messiahs by ensuring that goats and sheep will in future be identified electronically. The council of ministers has set December 31, 2009 as “the obligatory implementation date for the introduction of electronic identification (EID) of sheep and …

[Anonymous Coward]

Another cock up

Just imagine the anger as 500 million sheep names, farms and ages turn up on a pig farmers laptop...

We just can't trust them !

[Oldgoat]

How fresh is your goat?

This has been reported elsewhere last week. The industry is pretty unhappy with it, coming on the back of the introduction of double-tagging. The technology is less-than reliable and the cost overheads of each tag plus replacements at rates of around 1.2 per sheep unsutainable. They will press on regardless.

You might find the following EU-ness equally intriguing:

http://www.fwi.co.uk/Articles/2007/12/18/108770/eu-officials-to-draw-up-official-definition-of-fresh-on-food-labels.html

Paris, of course, eats pork.

[Mark]

Reminds me of "Small Gods"

Where a footnote says that if Om had found a goatherder, things may have been very different. Goats need to be persuaded whereas sheep need to be led.

So if Matt was being allegorical, only those who obey orders get the good stuff. Those that needed explanations will be damned for not just taking it.

[Graham Marsden]

Of course...

... they're no doubt hoping that the Sheeple will let them introduce such a scheme for humans...

[dek]

They don't fool me!

sheep and goats today, people tomorrow

[Tawakalna]

but what if..

..I tattoo "666" onto a sheep? does the sheep go to hell? what if one of the goats really wants to be a sheep and displays no goat-like qualities whatsoever, does it get to go to heaven?

[Alan Gregson]

Won't matter

When the apocalypse arrives and Christ is looking for the data to do his sorting it will have been lost by the US outsourcing company Lucifer Inc, he then finds out that the backup was posted by some civil servant and was never seen again...

"Bollocks to it" says Jesus, he sends the whole lot to Heck and phones his dad to get the whole process started again.

[Anonymous Coward]

Two things

I really enjoy lamb roast - does this mean I'm going to accumulate the ID's of all I eat? Will the government be able to track me because I'm suddenly emitting "Shaun's" ID? Will I be arrested for misrepresenting myself?? Help!

By the way:

--- snip ---

Crucially, the goats are destined for eternal damnation, while the sheep will enter into the kingdom of heaven, having earned their status through good works – feeding the hungry, clothing the poor and the like.

--- snip ---

Speaking as a Christian, and not someone who says that he is one just because he can quote the occasional bible verse and goes to church [only] at Christmas, Christianity has never been about earning your way into heaven through good works. Good works is the mark of a Christian, it's true, but if you really believe that you can earn your way into heaven then you've missed the point.

[Fenwar]

@Alan Gregson

'"Bollocks to it" says Jesus, he sends the whole lot to Heck and phones his dad to get the whole process started again.'

According to some interpreters that's exactly what happened last time...

[TeeCee]

Sales opportunity.

Selling under-the-counter chip ID readers to the Welsh should make a few bob.

<Beep> Had that one.

<Beep> Had that one.

<Beep> Had that one.

<Beep> Way-hay, fresh meat. Here we go boyo.

[Thomas Schulze]

Cake

And of course there is the brilliant Cake song explaining it all... http://hypem.com/search/cake%20sheep/1/

[Anonymous Coward]

Do EU Androids Dream....

...of Electric Sheep IDs?

[Charlie]

Hmm

Great, another thing to bump up the prices.

Going off on a tangent, I wait eargerly for the day the EU members realise that it's a massive waste to sustain the highly expensive protection of European agriculture and toss the whole thing in the bin. Yes, a few farmers will suffer, but it's nonsense to artificially sustain such uncompetitive econolies.

[Liam Johnson]

Daft

hows this going to work, sheep don't have fingerprints - duh.

[Luther Blissett]

Check the IT angle

Stuff the sheep (as some already have). Just as the USA has its Iraq and Afghanistan which justify its government feeding its MIC (military/industrial complex) huge quantities of US citizen dollar with little account of the outcome democratic or otherwise, so the EU has its own pet projects which justify feeding its MIC (media/information complex) huge quantities of euros and pounds with little account of the outcome democratic or otherwise.

So who are our new alien overlords?

[Curtis W. Rendon]

ignore it

Civil disobedience!

If there are any sheep and goat herders on this list, ignore it. If they give you sheep dip about it, then let 'em starve.

And to AC, this whole works vs. faith thing is why I gave up on the fans of Jesus. Doing wrong all your life but going to heaven because you have faith, I don't want to be in the same heaven.

[Anonymous Coward]

eSheep

Will they be baa-coded?

Extra long sleeves? Ties up at the back? That's the one.

[Iamfanboy]

@ Rendon and the AC

Maybe if Christianity WAS about earning your way into Heaven through good works, we'd have a lot less poverty, hunger, and greedy evangelicals cluttering up our lives.

[Ole Juul]

Farmers already do enough shovelling

This is just a pile of bureaucratic shit. All that will happen is the creation of more useless government jobs and more silly devices made and sold. Animals are already tagged and farmers know who they buy from. If there is a health problem it will probably show up after the ID has been removed anyway. Sheep are born, raised, and then sent to the abetoire all in less than a year, so they are generally not bought and sold more than once. On top of it all, unlike cattle, sheep and goats are raised in fenced off areas, so they don't get lost or end up in strange places.

[Jeff Deacon]

Re: Farmers already do enough shovelling

> sheep and goats are raised in fenced off areas, so they don't get lost or end up in strange places

That may be how it works where you farm, but there were quite a lot of hill sheep in the wilder parts of the UK until foot and mouth. Adopt own conspiracy theory to taste, but there are a lot fewer of them now. This rule will make it all but impossible to manage a hill sheep farm any more!

The ink is barely dry on that treacherous traitorous not-a-constitution- not-a-reform- (ah yes) Lisbon treaty, and here we are off again with the unstoppable EU machine at work. When DO we get a chance to vote the super government out? When DO we get a chance to decide whether we actually want anything more than the free trade area that Ted Heath not-promised lied to us about? When DO we get a chance to vote down this latest decision? When DO we get a chance to leave?

I would get my coat if I could, but anywhere worth going to already has the barriers up.

[leigh porter]

Not of Works

"Crucially, the goats are destined for eternal damnation, while the sheep will enter into the kingdom of heaven, having earned their status through good works – feeding the hungry, clothing the poor and the like."

This of course it not the case. Nobody can earn their status with Christ. Indeed, Paul states this in his letter to the Ephesians:

8 For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, 9 not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

So please, dear Register, get your theology right :-)

P.S.

I am willing to be your theological consultant.

[Richard Tobin]

Omission

How did you manage to write this article without mentioning the number of the beast?

[Shakje]

But what about

Babe? The sheep-pig?

[Slaine]

Baaaaaaaa-d Move

This is just a prelude to ID cards for us hoo-mons.

They will introduce the new ID system and begin a lengthy and expensive pilot study to ensure that there are no problems, side effects, data losses etc. Then, 6 months before the first report is published, identifying hideous problems, the whole scheme is rolled out across the whole of Europe.