HORSE welfare, abandoned and straying animals and equine identification were the key issues prompting politicians from all sides to call for action at a meeting of the Joint Committee of Agriculture, Food and the Marine in the Oireachtas this week .

Chief Veterinary Officer of the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Martin Blake (pictured) said that “major strides’’ had been made in these areas in recent years, aided by the introduction of the Control of Horses Act 1996 and the Animal Health and Welfare Act 2013.

The Department is currently working on an Animal Welfare Strategy for Ireland which will be finished in the next few months.

Blake commented: “We all recall in 2013 the contamination of beef with horsemeat and we took a significant review of how horses are traced into the foodchain. We have enhanced the database.

Database

“All animals must be on the database, all registered. That’s verified by the Department’s inspectors. We check the ID of the animals. We have started to harvest the microchip post slaughter to cross-check. There’s 6,000-7,000 horses slaughtered in two plants for export and it’s quite easy for us to check. If we find two microchips post slaughter, the carcass is rejected. It’s a very robust system,” Blake informed the committee members.

The committee, chaired by Carlow-Kilkenny Deputy Pat Deering TD (FG), also heard that there is about 250,000 horses in Ireland with 25,000 premises registered on the Department’s Central Equine Aatabase and that equine identification rates were approaching nearly 90% of where the Department expected it to be.

Dermot Murphy of the Department’s Animal Health and Welfare Division said: “We are a lot more advanced now in terms of equine identificiation and microchipping since 2009.

“It (Control of Horses Act 1996) has served the country well over the past 23 years. Elements of the Act could come up for review in terms of licensing.

“The Act has worked very well, there is less accidents (involving stray horses). I would not want to throw out the baby with the bathwater.”

The Control of Horses Act 1996 was brought in to deal primarily with the problem of straying animals, mostly in uban areas, with Blake commenting, “it is totally unacceptable that any domesticated animal be abandoned by its owner.” The biggest difficulty with straying horses is identifying the owners responsible. Paddy Mahon, chair of the Local Government Management Agency, told the committee that local authorities are spending between €500 and €1,000 per horse.

Enforcement

Advocating a Service Level Agreement model, Mahon said: “We feel welfare is linked to the control of horses. It needs vigorous enforcement and a multi-agency response which can deal with each county. There should be greater enforcement of the local bylaws.”

Director of Services for Kildare County Council, Joe Boland, pointed out that the problem of straying and abandoned equines had “abated but has not gone away”.

He added: “I would emphasise the importance of a multi-agency approach - the Department, farmers, horse owners, enforcement of equine identification, bylaws and exclusion zones - full traceability of horses.

“All owners should be fully accountable. A review of the Control of Horses Act is urgent required. A lot of what we do is reactive.”