Brussels, 12/09/2014 (Agence Europe) - A Commission proposal to revise the rules for the identification of horses was approved on Thursday 11 September by the experts of the member states of the EU, meeting within the Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health.
The revised regulation provides for a more reliable and safer European system for the registration and identification of horses in the EU. The aim is to prevent the inadvertent or fraudulent slaughter for human consumption of horses which must be excluded from the food chain. The Commission sees this as a sure sign that the EU has learnt lessons from the horsemeat scandal which broke last year.
With nearly 7 million equidae in Europe, the new rules will require foals to be issued with a single passport featuring a unique identification number, before their first birthday. This passport will also serve as a medical record and will accompany the horse for its lifetime. All horses born after 1 July 2009 will need to be micro-chipped. Technical security features aiming to reduce the risk of falsified passports have also been put in place.
The introduction of a compulsory centralised database in all member states will assist the competent authorities to better control the issuance of passports by different passport-issuing bodies. For the keepers, it will also make the procedures for updating the identification data in both the passport and the database of the issuing bodies substantially easier.
The regulation will enter into force from 1 January 2016. However, EU countries which do not already have a centralised database will have until 1 July 2016 to put one in place.
The rules of the identification of horses are laid down in Commission Regulation 504/2008 of 6 June 2008, which allows for more than one passport-issuing body to be approved and supervised at national level. European Union veterinary medicine legislation lays down rules on the slaughter of horses for human consumption after medical treatment. Horses treated with bute or other medicines not authorised for food-producing animals are prohibited from entering the food chain. If a horse receives a specific medicinal treatment with substances listed specifically for use in horses, a six-month waiting period needs to be respected before that horse can be slaughtered for human consumption. (LC)