THE review of the Scottish Sheep Sector, commissioned by the Scottish Government, was published this week and contains 24 recommendations to help secure a successful future for the sector.
Some are of a practical nature and could be relatively easy to implement. For, example, improving carcase grade and conformation could yield an average £3 extra per lamb slaughtered, while the simple and eminently sensible option to age lambs as a year old in the month of June following the year of birth is one aspiration that ScotGov could deliver at a few strokes of a computer key board (that is as long as the computer is functional and fit for purpose)!
Others (the vast majority) are more complicated, require collaboration throughout the production chain and will, inevitably, take much longer to implement.
And, for this reason alone, these run the highly probable risk of suffering the same fate as the previous Scottish Government induced report by Andrew Dewar Durie which was commissioned in October 1999, delivered in September 2000, and which has gathered dust on a dusky shelf ever since.
It is up to the industry bodies who have been tasked to take the lead on individual recommendations to ensure there is no government backsliding, no matter how hard they try.
But even if all 24 points are taken on board and progressed with gusto by government and stakeholders alike, there are a couple of serious fundamentals which are glossed over, presumably because they were outwith the remit of the reporting group.
The most glaring is just how Scotland is going to repopulate its glens with sheep, and the families required to look after them, at a time when cash incentives are miserly, the powerful Green lobby would have them (the sheep and the people) done away with altogether in these areas. And then, of course, there is the ever growing march of the tree planters who have the money and government backing to populate these self same glens with blanket afforestation.
In addition, there is the fact that such large percentage of Scottish bred and reared sheep are slaughtered in England and Wales, which renders them unable to be promoted as Scotch, despite the levies on them.