The idea might be reviewed, but not until it has been tried, said one of Mr Benn's new deputy ministers, Jane Kennedy, in a debate on Electronic Identification (EID) on Wednesday. Ms Kennedy has taken over the farming brief held by Lord Jeff Rooker.
Welsh Lib Dem MP Mark Williams, who secured the short debate, said sheep EID was meant to be useful in tracing the movements of diseased animals but adequate manual recording had been introduced since foot & mouth in 2001 and the technology for EID was still unreliable.

Mr Williams said he had heard the start-up costs estimated at £1,900 for a 1,000-ewe farm and £1,000 for a 200-ewe farm and asked if the minister had any better figures. Ms Kennedy said she would ask for them.

She quoted her boss, Mr Benn, saying at a recent meeting: "EID may have seemed like a good idea ... but times have changed and the costs clearly outweigh the benefits to the sheep sector. Regulation has to recognise when circumstances change."

But, she said, the European Commissioner in charge had insisted two weeks ago that "the regulation will not be reviewed before implementation", because some countries had already made all the preparations. Defra continued to argue about details but "we have to implement the directive, as not to implement it would put at risk the payments upon which sheep farmers depend".

The regulation is due to take effect in the UK in January 2010.

Mr Williams said after the debate: "I am sure that the Commission isn't keen to revisit this regulation but we must keep up the pressure."

n A West Yorkshire farmer lost nearly a third of his sheep in unexplained sudden deaths after feeding them brewery mash.

An investigation has concluded that the sheep were poisoned by copper – probably from copper sulphate, used as a fungicide on hops.

But the report says beer drinkers need not worry as they would not ingest the copper in the same concentrations and they are not as vulnerable to it as sheep.

The farmer, in the Huddersfield area, called in government vets a month ago after losing about 17 sheep from a flock of 60.

The vets diagnosed jaundice, apparently caused by copper, and referred the case to West Yorkshire Trading Standards, who police the quality of feedstuffs.

Trading Standards discovered that the farmer had picked up spent hops and grains from three 'microbreweries', thinking it would make a good cheap feed supplement.

A trading standards officer said: "We did not realise, and he did not realise, that hops are nowadays imported from all over the temperate world. Big brewers do sell spent mash for animal feed but they are obliged to test it for copper content. That's not something a farmer could easily do himself.

"He did an informal deal which seemed like a bargain at the time and one of the samples we took had 20 times the permitted amount."