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Studbook - NEWS<br />
NEWS UPDATE:<br />
CHANGES TO<br />
PASSPORT<br />
LEGISLATION<br />
The introduction of the Equine Identification (England)<br />
Regulations 2018) on 1ST October this year will impact<br />
significantly on the role of the studbooks that issue<br />
equine passports, usually referred to as studbook<br />
passport issuing organisations (PIOs), even though the<br />
format of the equine passport is essentially unchanged.<br />
This is due to the new requirement that all horses and<br />
ponies (regardless of age) will need to have microchips<br />
and the fact that breaches of passport regulations (for<br />
example owning a horse that is not microchipped and/<br />
or does not have a passport issued by an approved PIO<br />
) can now be the subject of a civil action - not just a<br />
criminal one – which will provide much needed income to<br />
local authorities and Trading Standards, add even more<br />
pressure to the workload of PIOs.<br />
As PIOs are the providers of both data to the Central<br />
Equine Database and evidence of breaches of passport<br />
regulations to courts, they will therefore be called on<br />
even more than before to generate comprehensive and<br />
up to date records of microchip-based identifications,<br />
registrations, location and ownership of the animals for<br />
which they issue passports.<br />
In this increasingly demanding situation it is a<br />
considerable relief to the over 50-strong studbook PIO<br />
community – which ranges from Weatherbys to the<br />
Donkey Society and from Sport Horse Breeding of Great<br />
Britain, through <strong>British</strong> Hannoverian Horse Society<br />
and the Sports Pony Studbook Society through to the<br />
Dartmoor Pony Society and the Gypsy Cob Society --<br />
that it now has a single voice to represent it. This new<br />
organisation is the 826 Equine Studbooks Association<br />
(826 being the UK country code that forms the first three<br />
numbers of the UELN for any passport issued by a Defra<br />
approved PIO) was voted into existence in March 2018<br />
and already has a significant majority of the studbook<br />
PIOs as members.<br />
As such it has already represented the studbook PIOs<br />
at the first meeting of the new <strong>British</strong> Horse Council<br />
(an amalgamation of the former <strong>British</strong> Horse Industry<br />
Board and the Defra Equine Sector Council) which is the<br />
official lead body to Defra for representing the interests<br />
of all aspects of the equine industry in the UK (including<br />
welfare and competition organisations).<br />
The 826 ESA also has its own Equine Law Monitoring<br />
Group which scrutinises all forthcoming regulations that<br />
affect horse and pony breeding and a welfare committee<br />
is also currently being formed. It also has a panel of<br />
Observers (both organisations and individual consultants)<br />
who can provide specialist input and experience but do<br />
not represent member studbooks and these include such<br />
bodies as the <strong>British</strong> Horse Society, the Central Prefix<br />
Register and the National Stallion Association.<br />
Obviously the 826 ESA is not an individual membership<br />
organisation as only Defra approved studbook PIOs can<br />
join, but if anyone would like to learn more about it – or<br />
who thinks that they have expertise which would be of<br />
help to the organisation – then please feel free to contact<br />
the Chair, Celia Clarke via celia.clarke@outlook.com<br />
or celia@cwath.demon.co.uk<br />
Celia Clarke<br />
www.british-breeding.com BRITISH BREEDER| 39
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