4.—(1) The National Assembly is the competent authority for the purposes of Article 4(5) of Regulation (EC) No. 1760/2000, and any person who either removes or replaces an ear tag (or an ear tag attached under previous cattle tagging legislation) without permission in contravention of that Article or Article 4(4) of Regulation (EC) No. 1760/2000 is guilty of an offence.
(2) If a keeper of an animal born in Great Britain on or after 1 January 1998 discovers that an ear tag has become illegible or has been lost, he or she must, within 28 days of the discovery, replace it with another ear tag bearing the same number (which must be a primary tag if the original was primary, or a primary or secondary tag if the original tag was secondary) and failure to do is an offence.
(3) If a keeper of an animal born in Great Britain before 1 January 1998 discovers that an ear tag has become illegible or has been lost, he or she must, within 28 days of the discovery, either re-tag it with another single tag, or re-tag it with double tags in accordance with these Regulations, and any person failing to do so is guilty of an offence.
(4) If an animal born outside Great Britain loses an ear tag the keeper must, within 28 days of discovering that the ear tag has been lost, re-tag it using a replacement tag that has—
(a)the crown logo specified in paragraph 11; and
(b)the original identification code,
and any person failing to do so is guilty of an offence.
(5) It is an offence to apply an ear tag to an animal if it has previously been used to identify a different animal.
(6) It is an offence to apply an ear tag to an animal if the ear tag number has already been used on a different animal.
(7) Paragraphs (2) to (4) do not apply to the occupier of a slaughterhouse or the operator of a market.