From 1 January 2025

• Livestock owners must ensure that sheep and farmed goats born on or after 1 January 2025 are properly identified with permanent identifiers (NLIS accredited eID) before sheep or goats leave any property.
• Recording of property to property (P2P) movements commences.  P2P is any movement of livestock to a different PIC outside of a saleyard or processors. Under the NLIS, P2P movements between different property identification codes (PICs) must be recorded in the NLIS database within 2 days.

This includes

• Movement of livestock between your own properties if those properties have different PICs
• Purchasing livestock privately or on an online platform, e.g. on Auctions Plus
• Moving livestock to and from leased/agistment property/stock route
• Any other movements irrespective of whether or not the livestock are sold.

Generally, it is the responsibility of the party receiving the livestock to complete the movement on the NLIS database.

From 1 January 2027

• Livestock owners must ensure that sheep and farmed goats of any age are properly identified with permanent identifiers (NLIS accredited eID) before they leave any property (including agistment properties) from 1 January 2027.

Any time

• All livestock owners of one or more sheep or goat must have a Property Identification Code (PIC). You can apply for a PIC through Local Land Services
• Register an NLIS account on the database, visit the NLIS website
• Attend workshops and field days or complete online learning modules to learn how to implement the new eID system for NLIS (Sheep and Goats), including scanning of eIDs and recording these in the NLIS database.

You can find more information at Training and Resources.

To learn about NLIS requirements for sheep and goats in NSW visit the NSW DPI NLIS Sheep and Goat website.

For more information on how to complete NLIS transfers, or to find a current list of accredited NLIS tags, visit the Integrity Systems Company Website.

NLIS database user guide for producers

An eID is an electronic identification device that has an internal microchip and is printed with a unique serial number, which is attached to individual sheep and farmed goats generally in the form of an ear tag, or leg band for some goats. The eID can be scanned and the individual electronic data is uploaded to the National Livestock Identification System (NLIS) database. The NLIS is Australia’s system for the identification and traceability of cattle, pigs, sheep and goats.

NLIS (Sheep and Goats) as a mob-based system was fully implemented in mid-2010. The NLIS has matured, and our markets are more stringent in their traceability requirements. Consequently, a more accurate and efficient traceability system for sheep and goats is now required.

The introduction of eID will:

• Provide more accurate and timely traceability of animals
• Reduce time delays to manage an emergency disease or residue incident
• Reduce the number of animals and producers impacted (including animals destroyed) in response to an emergency disease
• Reduce the time that Australia is restricted from export markets following an emergency disease or residue incident.

NSW approves eID devices which are NLIS accredited by Integrity Systems Company for use. Currently, there are no UHF livestock devices either NLIS accredited or in the NLIS accreditation process that can be used on sheep and goats. Readers and other eID infrastructure would also need to be upgraded to make it possible to read the electronic information in a UHF device. The additional time and resources that would be required to trial, acquire and upgrade the entire supply chain to install UHF supplies currently means that the existing eID equipment is the only viable option for our national implementation timeline for the foreseeable future.

Yes, the Commonwealth Government has announced $26 million for an upgrade of the National Livestock Identification System (NLIS) database.

Integrity Systems Company will use this investment to develop a new database that has improved functionality, user-friendliness, analytics, reporting and cybersecurity. The new database will be developed independently to avoid impacting the functionality of the current database. For more information, please visit the Integrity Systems Company Database Upgrade website.

Implementing eID will have a cost impact on all sheep and goat supply chain segments.

Many factors will determine the exact cost to you of implementing sheep and goat eID in your operation. These can include what type of operation you have, the size of your operation, whether you buy in or breed sheep or goats, how you buy in sheep or goats, and whether you transfer sheep between PICs.

Between 1 November 2024 to 31 October 2025 NSW sheep and goat producers can take advantage of the Sheep and Goat eID Tag Discount Program when purchasing NLIS-accredited white eID devices.

There will be a government-supported discount on tags in NSW between 1 November 2024 to 31 October 2025.

This discount will be $0.76 per tag applied to 2025 NLIS-accredited white eID tags when purchasing from the retailer or manufacturer.

Once the tag discount program is in place, producers will not have to complete any additional paperwork to participate in accessing discounted tags.

For many producers, the only change will be switching from a visual tag to an eID. Sheep and goat producers may not need to purchase tag reading equipment. However, access to a scanner will be necessary if you move stock between properties with different PICs, or onto your PIC.

Producers may want to purchase eID equipment to use individual animal data on health, fertility, genetics, weight gain and wool traits to make more informed management, monitoring and selection decisions. This individual commercial decision by producers may facilitate the ability to improve productivity and profitability.

eID provides the ability for sheep producers to obtain individual animal data for such matters as health, fertility, genetics, weight gain and wool traits. Such data allows producers to make more informed management, monitoring and selection decisions thereby facilitating the ability to improve productivity and profitability.

The ability to trace animals more quickly via eID allows Government to reduce disease spread and to respond and manage exotic disease incidents more quickly. This reduces the risk to producers that their animals and revenue will be negatively impacted in the case of disease spread.

In this case no, they would not be required to be tagged. But they, or the sheep/goats they were bred from, should have been recorded as being present on your property in the NLIS database. NSW Regulation requires that sheep must have a permanent identifier (in the form of an NLIS accredited device) before they leave or move from their property of birth or subsequent properties.

Once you purchase NLIS accredited eIDs, they are individually registered to your PIC on the NLIS database.

When moving animals through saleyards or to slaughter at abattoirs, saleyard and abattoir operators are responsible for scanning and recording each animal’s eID into the NLIS database. This includes data such as the eID’s microchip number, the PIC animals are received from and PIC to where the animal has been transferred to.

However, recording of property to property (P2P) movements will require producers to scan each individual animal and upload their movement information into the NLIS database. For more information visit: Buying, selling and moving livestock.

No. NSW will continue to strongly recommend use of the year of birth colour system for eIDs, noting that post-breeder eIDs will always be pink.

Use of breeder tags which correspond to the nationally agreed colour for the year of birth is recommended and continues to be used by many producers. The colours are rotated through an eight-year cycle.

Goat leg bands are yellow for breeders and pink for post breeders.

The recent 2020 SAFEMEAT Traceability Evaluation Exercise reported that within 24 hours, 70% of sheep slaughtered using visual tags were traceable back to the vendor or property of residence for the last 30 days, compared to almost 100% of sheep with eIDs accurately traced back to vendor or property of residence within the same time period.

Whilst eID does not prevent an exotic disease or residue incident, eID enables more accurate and timely traceability of animals, and their cohorts. This is critical for managing disease outbreaks swiftly, and reducing the time Australia faces export market bans.

For example, the UK foot-and-mouth outbreak in 2001 took seven weeks to trace animals due to the absence of eID. The disease spread, which resulted in a seven-year export market ban. The implementation of eID in Victoria demonstrated that traceback can now take minutes instead of days.

Feral pigs, deer and other vertebrate pests are routinely and strategically managed to reduce their economic, environmental and social impacts. This helps manage the transmission of existing endemic diseases to domestic stock.

A targeted reduction in feral animal numbers in a specified area has been shown to break disease transmission cycles. In NSW we are testing our ability to help eradicate an emergency animal disease by rapidly reducing high numbers of targeted feral animals in specific areas, which might surround an exotic disease incursion point.

While feral animals may play a role in the transmission of some livestock diseases, transmission between livestock is likely to be the major immediate threat in the case of emergency animal diseases.

Control of feral animals during an exotic disease emergency is outlined in the AUSVETPLAN for wild animal response.