Brussels, 18/10/2013 (Agence Europe) - In a ruling delivered on Thursday 17 October (case C-101/12), the Court of Justice of the EU has rules that the obligation of individual electronic identification for sheep and goats is valid. This provision, the Court says, does not infringe the freedom to conduct a business or the principle of equal treatment.
The Verwaltungsgericht Stuttgart (Stuttgart Administrative Court, Germany), which was hearing an action brought by a German farmer with 450 ewes, asked the Court of Justice to verify whether obligations to individually identify his animals and to individually identify them electronically, and to keep a holding register are valid or whether they infringe the freedom to conduct a business and the principle of equal treatment.
Up until the major outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in 2001, keepers of sheep and goats only had to mark their animals with an eartag or a tattoo that made it possible to determine the holding from which they came. Furthermore, those animal keepers had to keep a register indicating the total number of sheep and goats present each year. After the epizootic, in the interest of improving the prevention of such epidemics and improving the functioning of the trade in sheep and goats between member states, the EU introduced a new system under which each animal must be identified individually by two means of identification, namely by a traditional eartag and by an electronic device. The latter may take the form of an electronic eartag, a ruminal bolus, an electronic transponder or an electronic mark on the pastern.
The identity of each animal must be recorded in a holding register and, when animals leave the holding, their movements are to be recorded in a document accompanying those animals. In addition, each member state is obliged to set up a central register or computer database recording all holdings located on its territory and, at regular intervals, to take an inventory of the animals kept on those holdings.
The Court finds that, although those obligations may limit the exercise of the freedom to conduct a business, they are, however, legitimate objectives in the public interest, namely health protection, the control of epizootic diseases, the welfare of animals and the completion of the internal market for those animals. It says that those obligations are not disproportionate either in terms of the financial burdens or animal welfare. It states that the new electronic identification system for sheep and goats also complies with the principle of equal treatment. It finds that the derogation which permits member states with a small sheep or goat population to make the electronic identification system optional does not discriminate against animal keepers established in a member state where that identification is obligatory. (LC/transl.fl)