Seems the ONLY People Thrilled With the Passports Are……….

And Here Is Research On Some Common Drugs Marketed In Europe……..
I don’t think the Europeans are as thrilled about this passport business as we have been led to believe…….Don’t comment to me I didn’t write it. Only guilty of copy and paste.

---The media has been having a field day over European Union legislation requiring horse owners to supposedly undertake that they will not eat their horse.
"I hereby declare that I will not eat my horse or pony," the mass circulation tabloid, The Sun, headlined its take on the story.
Describing the new EU rules as barmy, The Sun reported that horse owners must sign a pledge not to eat their pets - or face up to two years in jail.
United Kingdom Independence Party leader Nigel Farage was quoted as saying: "I'd like to be a fly on the wall when the Queen and Princess Anne are asked to sign a form saying they're not going to eat their horses."
Bloggers and the like have taken up the story with glee, providing yet more grist for the mill for those who delight in the obscure, quirky and sometimes downright bizarre twists and turns found in the growing mountain of EU regulations.
The "pledge" is part of EU regulations around horse identification which come into force in Britain on July 1.
The regulations recognize the fact that horses regularly enter the food chain in continental Europe.
The regulations will require all foals born after July 1, and horses born before June 30 that have not yet been issued with an equine passport, to have a microchip implanted by a veterinary surgeon when their owners apply for a passport.
Compulsory microchipping will aid accurate identification as it provides a permanent link between the horse and its lifetime passport, Britain's Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs explains.
The microchips, to be placed in a horse's neck by a veterinarian, will match the passport.
"Horse passports will clearly identify those horses which are not eligible for the food chain if they have been treated with substances which are potentially harmful to humans.
"By strengthening the current passport system we reduce the risk to human health, avoid the withdrawal of key veterinary medicines, and protect the horse meat trade in this country."
Microchipping will also help recover and identify stolen and abandoned horses, as well assist with welfare cases.
The new EU regulation provides for a standardized format to exclude a horse from the food chain if certain medicines are used, or to suspend its slaughter for human consumption for six months if treatment is carried out with another set of listed medications. The passport must accompany an animal to slaughter.
The so-called pledge is actually about opting an animal out of the food chain.
The regulations state: "An equine animal shall be deemed to be intended for slaughter for human consumption, unless it is irreversibly declared as not so intended in Part II of Section IX of the identification document, by the signature of:
a. the keeper or owner on his/her own discretion, or
b. the keeper and the veterinarian responsible, acting in accordance with Article 10(2) of Directive 2001/82/EC."
A horse's passport can therefore be marked accordingly, or at a later date by a vet should medications be used that disqualify the animal from the food chain.
Actually, seeing the Queen and Princess Anne signing isn't so hard to imagine after all.
If you are among the one million people in the country who owns a horse, a pony or even a donkey, you should already know that by the end of June you must have a passport for the animal. If you are one of the many millions who do not, you will probably need to look twice at that opening sentence.
A passport? For a horse? Bizarre as it seems, the Government introduced regulations shortly before Christmas requiring all equines to be in possession of a passport, whether they are traveling or not. It is, effectively, a form of ID.
In the horse world, the issue has been a hot topic for a year or more. Jokes about how to fit the animal into the photo-booth rapidly gave way to anger over the costs and bureaucracy involved. Already, organizations such as the Horse Passport Agency have sprung up offering the required document to owners who will be criminalized if they fail to comply.
There is a fine of up to £5,000 and, for a second offence, one month's imprisonment. Imagine it. You could go to jail because you forgot, or declined, to get the Shetland pony at the bottom of your garden an ID card.
You may well ask why they are needed at all since racehorses and competition horses already require some sort of identity document to travel overseas. The story, unsurprisingly, begins in Brussels, where regulations were introduced 10 years ago to ensure that horses treated with certain drugs do not enter the human food chain.
Since the British do not eat horsemeat, the UK obtained a "derogation" that ran out last year. But instead of demanding another, the Government said it was legally bound to introduce compulsory passports for all equines.
So every owner, whether of the oldest nag in the farthest field or the proudest hunter in the stableyard, will have to sketch their animal, note down its identifying markings and send this information -- known as a "silhouette" -- to an approved agency, which will charge between £20 and £30 for the document.
This may not seem like a lot of money; but, a week or so ago, the Government further decreed that owners should not identify their own horses. Instead, the "silhouette" will have to be completed by a vet, who will probably charge £30 a go.
So a passport could end up costing £50 or more. For someone who owns a riding school, or a donkey sanctuary, and is already finding it hard to make ends meet, this will be a crippling cost.
James Gray, the Tory MP for North Wiltshire and president of the Association of British Riding Schools, said around 200 schools close down every year and he feared the new passport could spell the end for many more.
The Government maintains it has consulted widely and has the support of august bodies, such as the British Horse Society, one of a number of groups empowered to issue the passports. But Mr. Gray says there is outright hostility among ordinary owners and weekend riders represented by the ABRS, the Pony Club, the Donkey Breed Association, the Shetland Pony Association and many others.
The regulations will be enforced by trading standards officers with the power to enter stables and fields to see whether the horse matches the description on the passport. "The thought of a new army of jobsworths stalking the countryside checking the paperwork of horses fills me with dismay," said Mr Gray. "It is a bureaucratic solution to a problem that doesn't even exist."
What possible justification is there for this law that will cost the industry millions of pounds to implement and could send small businesses to the wall?
Alun Michael, the "minister for the horse" at the Department for the Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs, said it would establish a database "which would be to the advantage of the horse industry in the event of horse diseases becoming a problem in this country". Asked in the Commons to identify what disease he had in mind, he failed to offer an example.
Some in the industry say there are spin-off advantages, such as allowing potential buyers to check whether an animal has been stolen and discovering how many horses and ponies there are in the country. But the principle reason is set out on Defra's own website: "It will satisfy the European Commission that the UK has a viable method of identifying horses that have been treated with medicines that must not be administered to food producing animals."
Since only a few thousand horses are slaughtered in this country and exported to Europe for food, why not limit the requirement to them? Why do a million owners have to go through this rigmarole because other countries have a taste for horsemeat?
Mr. Gray -- who is tabling two Commons motions today opposed to the regulations -- says the Government intends to remove a long-standing prohibition on exporting live horses other than high-value racehorses or stud animals. Combined with the passport, he suspects many more British horses will now be sold abroad for food, which is anathema to a country that is home to one quarter of all the horses in the EU.
There is a wider issue here about how we are governed and the cavalier use of legislation. This measure was brought in by way of a Statutory Instrument and was already law before MPs even had a chance to pass judgment. Moreover, the drafting was found to be seriously defective by a parliamentary monitoring committee, something the Government acknowledged.
In addition, the regulations covered only tame animals and therefore did not include thousands of semi-wild ponies on the West Country moors and in the New Forest for which separate arrangements have been made.
Yet instead of withdrawing them, ministers simply placed the flawed regulations on the Statute Book while promising to replace them with an unflawed version at a later date in order to "avoid confusion".
As Mr Bumble would have said, this law is an ass. And it does not need a passport to be identified as one.
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Guess there are some “anti-government separatist loons” in the UK too….Who would have thought?

Here are a few of the “banned” drugs mentioned in the comments following the market opinion piece I seem to remember one so called vet who was adamant about ivermectin not being studied in human consumption horses….guess that wasn’t as factual as we were led to believe…..
Don’t write to tell me this is not all of the drugs…..I realize that. It’s as far as I’ve gotten for several reasons so deal with it.
An Ivermectin containing wormer marketed in the UK as Eraquell http://www.hyperdrug.co.uk/Eraquell-horse-wormer-Larger-Tube-Treats-700kg-Bodyweight/productinfo/ERAQUELL reads as follows: Withdrawal period Horses may be slaughtered for human consumption only after 30 days from the last treatment.
A moxidectin containing wormer in the UK is marketed as Equest: http://www.hyperdrug.co.uk/Equest-horse-wormer-gel/productinfo/EQUEST/ reads as follows: must not be slaughtered for human consumption within 32 days of treatment.
A product containing moxidectin and praziquantel is marketed in the UK as Equest Promax http://www.hyperdrug.co.uk/Equest-horse-wormer-gel/productinfo/EQUEST/ reads as follows: must not be slaughtered for human consumption within 64 days of treatment.
Fenbendazole , a benzimidazole wormer marketed Panacur, Exodus, and Strongid P containing pyrantel are not allowed in horses to be used for human consumption.
Mebendazole, one of the benzimidazole wormers marketed as Telmin Granules http://www.hyperdrug.co.uk/Telmin-Granules-horse-wormer/productinfo/TELG/ has this statement (might be where the 180 days is coming from) indications, warnings, etc In accordance with the Horse Passport legislation (Commission Decision 2000/68/EC as implemented in national legislation), a 6 month withdrawal period applies to the use of this product.

Trivia for the day…..to the person who held Chinese racing up for demanding a $40,000 stipend of sorts for an owner to be allowed to race a horse as a model of humane foresight by a country looking after its equine athletes……Not so sure I’d bet the ranch on how much of that is in the interest of humane retirement for horses…….. The 2005 statistics for horses killed in China, 1.7 mil …..and just in case you think I made that up, go to the study outlining unintended consequences on a horse processing ban in the U.S. prepared for http://www.animalwelfarecouncil.org/ May 15, 2006. Do you think Chinese horse slaughter has gone from 1.7 mil to 0 in these past four years? Seriously?
Stop blaming the AQHA for all the wrongs in the world….It is not their responsibility to care for anyone’s horses. This is perhaps my favorite anti-slaughter oxymoron………If you can’t afford to humanely euthanize it you shouldn’t own it/what has the AQHA (or whatever association or person needing blamed at the time) done to care for unwanted horses…….Doesn’t anyone else see the crossed points here???????
Alex Brown has proclaimed we should keep the auction/rescue infrastructure we have only to administer grants payable to same for each horse they “humanely euthanize” or adopt. Am I the only one who finds this plan repulsive on several levels???????
RH1