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Canadian National Horse ID an Livestock Traceability System.

PORKER

Well-known member
Equine Canada - National ID System

June 14, 2007

In an effort to identify, track and trace the movement of horses on both a national and global scale, Equine Canada is getting ready to update the nation's horsepeople on plans for its National Horse Identification System - the equine contribution to the National Livestock Traceability System.

The Traceability System is currently in place for cattle, bison and sheep, and the program is expanding to include other species. Equine Canada is proposing to add equine movement tracking to the system as a tool to help minimize the impact of contagious disease outbreaks in Canadian livestock, and to make traveling across borders an easier and streamlined process for horses.

Equine Canada will be publishing a complete update on Horse ID and National Livestock Traceability in the next issue of its HorseLife Magazine.

One of the key concepts of Equine Canada's National Horse Identification System is the introduction of an international Universal Equine Life Number, which, according to EC's Equine ID and Traceability Steering Committee Co-Chairman Chris Gould, is "designed to cause minimum intrusion into the way we do our business, while achieving the maximum accuracy possible to manage risk to animal health and food safety."

According to Gould, the next proposed step is a phased-in implementation, with the three aspects of implementation being:

1) Adoption and use of UELN by Equine Canada, breed associations and other users of the system. Protocols and agreements required for this will be completed very soon and implementation can begin within the next few months.

2) Adoption and use of a standard coded descriptive identification system. This concept, pioneered in France, is being developed by an international committee of which Canada is an active member. Once agreement is reached it will be a key component of the system to prevent duplication. Adoption of this coded system will be part of the agreement and protocol involved for use of the UELN.

3) A data repository will be built to accept the ID and traceability information required by the national system for emergency animal health management.

"The UELN would consist of a six-digit number that is a prefix, which would go before a horse's existing number ID," Gould recently told Trot Insider. "The first three numbers indicate country (iso code). The second three digits indicate the origin of the record. For example, Standardbred Canada will have a unique three-digit number. In most cases this number will coincide with a breed registry."

Gould went on to say that the French-developed system is already in place internationally. Equine Canada is also planning to amalgamate records for horses currently enlisted in existing registries.

One of the challenges that Equine Canada is facing in terms of phasing in this initiative is that different countries and species are all at different stages in the identification and tracking of equine and wider livestock. In the United States, a national animal identification system for all livestock is currently being developed. By January 2009, there is a very real chance that horses crossing the U.S./Canadian border will be required to have official UELN documentation, which is already mandatory in Europe.

"EU regulation requires [horses to have] a health passport, which is a small booklet similar to a human passport. It contains identification information, ownership vaccination and other information," explained Gould. "To avoid duplication, the World Breeding Federation for Sport Horses has been able in most cases to have the document combined with the registration document and accepted by the sport bodies so that each horse will have only one document which meets all horse identification requirements.

"The UELN has been adopted voluntarily by many associations and is before the EU Commission for acceptance as the official numbering system. With this document the horse can travel freely within and between countries. This is essentially what we are proposing except that we will use electronic records rather than a physical paper document."
 
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