A YORK firm is looking to pull the wool over the eyes of sheep rustlers across the region as it teams up with North Yorkshire Police for the launch of Operation Bo Peep.

TecTracer has been developed by Trace-in-Metal, which has previously pioneered ground breaking marking systems to protect church roofs from lead thieves.

Now the team at the firm’s York Eco Business Centre offices have adapted their technology for safeguarding livestock, in particular sheep.

Subject to the successful completion of a trial, currently being undertaken on a Moors farm near Castleton, the TecTracer team is to join forces with North Yorkshire Police to launch “Operation Bo Peep!”, which will see the system rolled out region-wide.

TecTracer director John Minary, a former senior police detective, said: “Sheep stealing is a major problem for the whole of the UK, but in recent years the North East has been particularly hard hit.

“Since developing Trace-in-Metal we have been looking at other areas where the technology can be used.

“And, because the theft of sheep causes financial hardship, untold anxiety and major distress to farmers and their families, we have now adapted it to protect sheep.

“By having sheep protected by TecTracer it will certainly make would-be thieves think twice before contemplating stealing them.”

While Trace-in-Metal uses ballistics to fire thousands of microdots into metal sheets “marking” them with a unique identifying code, TecTracer uses raddles to ingrain thousands of coded markers into the sheep’s fleece.

Once attached to the animal’s coat, it will be easy to identify any sheep that has been TecTracer-marked, and which farm it originated from.

Together with signs advertising the TecTracer making system positioned around farm buildings and fields - combined with an e.alert early warning system linked to the police, farms, abattoirs and auction houses - its developers believe these will be such a deterrent as to render the animals virtually theft proof.

According to the NFU Mutual Rural Crime Report 2016, livestock rustling remains a huge problem, with costs stubbornly high in Northern Ireland and the North East and South West of England. At a total cost to the UK of £2.9 million, 70 per cent came from these three regions alone.

And while in 2015 equine crime is down by a quarter, the cost of livestock theft has risen by seven per cent.