Have you applied for your farm ID number yet? * Important new legislation in Alberta affecting your horses

Horse Sense and Premise ID

The Ag-Info Centre has received numerous calls over the past week concerning

confusion over premise identification for horse owners. A recent article contained a number of misleading statements concerning two new provincial acts that came into effect on January 1st, 2009. The two acts that came into effect on January 1st are the Livestock Identification and Commerce Act and the Animal Health Act.  

It’s time to put out this grass fire. First of all, relax. For horse owners the situation is not as critical as the article would lead you to believe. The Livestock Identification and Commerce Act was referenced in the article, however this act does not deal with Premise Identification. The Livestock Identification and Commerce Act (LICA) is a consolidation of the Brand Act, the Livestock Identification and Brand Inspection Act and the Livestock and Livestock Products Act. For horse owners, LICA actually provides one main advantage over the previous acts. With the new act, horse owners no longer require a manifest unless they are transporting their horses for the purpose of sale or slaughter, to an inspection site ( basically to determine proof of ownership if required by an inspector ), or out of the province. So if you load your horse in the trailer and haul him to the neighbour’s branding or a local ranch roping you no longer have to fill out a manifest.

The aforementioned article also discussed increased protocols for biosecurity. The Act does not specify definitive biosecurity protocols but rather gives the Chief Provincial Veterinarian the ability to establish those protocols in conjunction with any order under the containment levels mentioned earlier. Biosecurity need not be as restrictive as the article implied. So for now, cowboy logic prevails for biosecurity on horse operations.

The spectre of unwanted horses may also become a reality should horse owners find biosecurity protocols too onerous to deal with. The Tracebility Premise Identification Regulation is attached to the Animal Health Act and it is the regulation dealing with horses on premises. Horses are a recordable animal under the regulation and as such, all horse owners are required to obtain a premise identification account which is a unique identifying number assigned to an owner.

Individual animals do not require registration under this regulation. Furthermore, owners of premises with horses present must also apply for a premise identification account even if they do not own any of the animals. This would be the case in a commingling site. A commingling site is a premise where recordable animals owned by different owners are kept together either temporarily or permanently.

Examples of commingling sites for horse owners would be boarding stables, ag society or exhibition grounds, and race tracks. In addition premise owners must apply for a premise identification number which is unique identifying number assigned to a premise. The premise owner must specify where the premise is, either by land location, LINC number, geo-reference, surveyed parcel description, federal land or a street address and provide contact information for the owner. The premise owner must also list the recordable species resident on the premise along with the potential number of each species that could possibly reside on the premise.

A commingling site operator must provide premise identification numbers to horse owners who have horses on the site and the horse owner then in turn enters that number in his or her application for a premise identification account.

Additional information on premise identification and the forms can be found on Alberta

So for now or until we hear differently relax and go out and enjoy your horses. They’ll thank you for it.