New Zealand may be leading the charge on carbon emission rules, but the adoption of electronic identification tags (eID) for sheep is not on their radar in immediate future.
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For New Zealand producers, just getting traceability with cattle tags is hard enough.
When asked what New Zealand's take on Australia's mandatory roll out of eID was, Peter Carver who runs 1500 ewes at Taranaki in the North Island, said it was just another headache.
"We are still getting our heads around cattle eID that's not working, this is just another headache we don't need," Mr Carver said.
Mr Carver was among 1600 global farmers as well as agribusiness corporates who attended Rabobank's Farm2Fork event in Sydney last Thursday.
It comes as industry in NSW has called on a new Labor government for financial assistance on eID and more consultation with the sector.
Dave Menzies, who runs 9000 sheep at St Bathans on the South Island, said there would be benefits from a mandatory point of view for genetics.
But as he farmed in "reasonably scrubby environment", the loss of tags would be an issue and reasonably costly.
"It would work for stud people, but for commercial people like us, it's quite costly and whether we would get economic gain I'm not sure," Mr Menzies said.
"I see in Australia why they are adopting it for biosecurity as they are close to Indonesia but we don't have that issue.
"The only way it would work in New Zealand was if it was subsidised."
Luke Moody, who runs 5000 ewes at Central Otago, SI, said the cattle eID tags in New Zealand were a "shambles".
"I trade a reasonable number of cattle, they come onto my place and they don't always have tags or documentation," Mr Moody said.
"Then you get a phone call two years after the fact about what happened to those cattle.
"We have no systems in order for cattle let alone millions of sheep around the country. It's just another compliance cost I can't see it working."
Meanwhile, NSW Farmers head of policy and advocacy, Annabel Johnson, said the new Labor Agriculture Minister would have a long road ahead of them on the eID scheme that the previous government signed up to for sheep and goats.
"We still don't know how much the overall transition will cost individual farmers, and we've been pretty clear that any mandate to adopt this new technology needs to come with financial assistance so farmers don't have to foot the bill," Ms Johnson said.
Barwon MP Roy Butler would also be including eID on the list he would be delivering to Labor on regional and agricultural issues because it needed a 'rethink' on how it was going to be adopted.
Pastoralists' Association of West Darling spokesperson, Lachlan Gall, said there were serious flaws in the NSW eID implementation plan, which was developed without enough effort going into seeking or adopting feedback from those who were most affected by the proposed changes.
"The association has made recommendations that would significantly improve traceability in the sheep and goat sectors without costing individual producers tens of thousands of dollars per annum indefinitely, but the decision makers have not been listening and producers are really frustrated and annoyed," Mr Gall said.
