Victorian Minister for Agriculture Jaala Pulford.

SALEYARDS at Sale and Leongatha are set to be the next selling centres to install equipment for the electronic scanning of sheep and goats in Victoria.

Victoria’s Minister for Agriculture Jaala Pulford said in State Parliament today that work was underway to help maximise the benefits of electronic identification across the sheep and goat supply chain.

Ouyen has become the first major saleyard to have fixed hardware fitted to scan electronically tagged sheep and goats, and equipment in Sale and Leongatha in Gippsland is set to follow.

The saleyard equipment and software is funded through the Andrews Labor Government’s $17 million sheep and goat transition package, and to date, almost 10.7 million sheep and goats have been electronically tagged in Victoria since the reform commenced.

Ms Pulford said Victoria is set for another year of ground-breaking progress as the state becomes the first in Australia to have a robust traceability system for sheep and goats based on electronic identification technology.”

“Each year, approximately five million sheep are sold at our saleyards – five million reasons why accurate traceability data is critical for our livestock industries.

“Victoria is leading the way with this reform, giving our producers and the whole state an advantage, and creating the agricultural jobs of the future,” she said.

The government said since the start of the year, the state’s meat processors have been recording and uploading the data from electronic tags to the National Livestock Identification System, enabling fast and accurate traceability in the event of a serious animal disease or food safety issue.

To help producers and livestock agents get up to speed with how to record property-to-property and private sale data, the first of a series of 21 Agriculture Victoria workshops is being held at Bairnsdale, Maffra and Koo Wee Rup this week. Further workshops will be held next week at Swan Hill, Ouyen, Birchip and St Arnaud.

Sheep and goat producers in Victoria are currently being subsidised 45 cents toward the cost of electronic ear tags and have on-going access to information and advice, the government said.

Click here for more information on the upcoming workshops.