The Law, Horse Passport Regulations (2004) requires all horses, ponies and donkeys in the UK to have a passport. The enforcement of the legislation ensures the continued availability of veterinary medicines such as Bute. These medicines would otherwise be withdrawn with serious economic and welfare implications for horse owners.
Microchip Offer For Vets
New EU legislation is expected to come into effect in 2009 that will require all horses to be microchipped before their owners can obtain a horse passport. In light of this, the Horse Passport Agency is supplying microchips to veterinary surgeons "at cost".
This "Not For Profit" service is intended to ensure that additional costs incurred by horse owners obtaining passports in 2009 are kept to a minimum.
Microchips will only be supplied to veterinary surgeons and can be ordered by a veterinary practice by contacting our office.
Passports – What You Need To Know:
Horses Without Passports: All horses, ponies and donkeys have required passports in the UK since 2005. If your horse doesn’t have a passport you are now in the minority and breaking the law.
The penalty if you are caught is a fine of up to £5,000 and a number of horse owners have received Police cautions. You wont get reported for applying late.
Still Not Got A Passport? If your horse is a specific breed and you know the sire and dam contact the relevant breed society, otherwise we will issue you with an £21 Identity Passport (£21 fee is valid for applications received before 31.12.08). Passports take about 10 working days to issue but if you need a passport quickly we have a Fast Track Service which takes just 1 working day.
Don’t Buy A Horse Without A Passport: Few people would dream of buying a car without the V5 document ("logbook") which describes the vehicle and names its current owner. Yet there are still people who will buy a horse or pony in good faith and without the passport. Too often (and too late) these animals are discovered to be older than advertised and in some cases even stolen.
Do not pay for the horse or collect it until you are given the passport. The vendor is legally required to hand the passport over at the time of sale and you can’t legally transport the horse home without it.
Once you have bought the horse you have 30 days to record the passport into your name. If we issued the passport you can now do this very easily On-Line.
In November 2006 we launched "OCO", On-Line Change of Ownership, which avoided the need for the passport to be posted to us. This has been very well received, especially with recent Royal Mail strikes, and last month 80% of all ownership updates were done on-line.
We have taken this as a signal that owners would like more on-line services and avoid having to return passports to us for updating. We are now launching a Registered User section which allows owners (who have previously registered an email with us when applying for a passport or via change of ownership) to log-in to our database. Currently they can update certain contact details, view animals recorded in their ownership and notify us, free of charge, when they have sold an animal. Additional features expected in 2008 will include Change of Address, Gelding, Microchip, Freeze brand and Naming updates.
