Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many sheep farmers in the UK have the ability to read sheep electronic identification tags.

There are a range of options available to sheep keepers to manage individual recording. Electronic tags can be read by eye (manually recording the visible individual animal number) or electronically using an electronic reader. Keepers may also choose for electronically identified sheep, which must be individually recorded, to be read on their behalf at central point recording centres (CPRCs).

It is not possible to say how many sheep farmers in England have the ability to read electronic sheep tags electronically as this is dependent on the number of keepers that have purchased EID readers. Defra does not hold this information.