Animal health and welfare
Trading Standards’ Animal Health Inspectors enforce farm animal health legislation. Their duties include:
- inspecting farms, markets and vehicles
- issuing licences and record books for movement of livestock
- enforcing animal feedstuffs legislation and issuing ‘On farm mixers’ licences.
Keeping livestock
'Livestock' refers to sheep, goats, cattle and pigs.
All keepers of livestock, whether they have a whole herd or just one animal, must be registered with the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).
You must also conform to legislation on animal identification and tracing. For full details on tagging and registering livestock see Defra's pages on Livestock movements, identification and tracing.
Reporting notifiable diseases
Many animal diseases are highly contagious and must be reported as soon as an outbreak is suspected. These are known as notifiable diseases.
Notifiable diseases include:
The Defra website has a full list of notifiable diseases.
If you suspect signs of any of these notifiable diseases, or have a case confirmed, you must report this immediately to a:
Livestock movements
To prevent the spread of disease, all livestock movements must be monitored. Owners of livestock must keep details of all movements of livestock, on and off their land, in Movement Record Books. These are available from:
- East Sussex Trading Standards
- Defra
The following regulations also apply.
Moving sheep, goats and pigs
Movements of sheep, goats and pigs must be accompanied by a movement document (AML 1 or AML 2). On completion of the journey, the white copy must be sent to the local authority of destination within 3 days. These forms are available from our Animal Health team.
Specimen forms can be found on Defra’s website pages about Animal Movement Licensing.
Moving cattle
Cattle have individual passports, which must always accompany them when they move. Cattle passports are issued shortly after birth by the British Cattle Movement Service. You can find out more from their website Cattle Tracing System Online.
More information about animal movements
Full details about the regulations regarding livestock movements are available from Defra’s website pages about Livestock movements, identification and tracing.
Advice about journey times and the types of transportation required can be downloaded from the Trading Standards Institute website pages about Animal Health and Welfare.
Animal feed
Many contagious diseases are passed to livestock through the food chain. To prevent this, Trading Standards’ Animal Health Inspectors carry out regular inspections of both producers and users of animal foodstuffs.
Businesses involved in the production, use, transportation, storage or marketing of animal feeds must be registered with Trading Standards and must comply with animal feed regulations.
Animal feed regulations
Current EC regulations relating to animal foodstuffs came into force on 1 January 2006 and were fully implemented in England on 1 January 2008.
To comply with the regulations, businesses involved in animal foodstuffs need to:
- register with or be approved by an appropriate agency, and
- submit a statement of compliance.
You can download the forms you need from the following pages:
Feeding catering waste as swill to farm animals is allowed only under tightly controlled circumstances. To find out more about what is and is not allowed, visit Defra’s website pages about Feeding catering waste as swill.
Disposal of livestock remains
To avoid contamination, livestock remains must be disposed of by approved means.
The Defra webpages have more detail about this and the disposal of other animal by products:
Preventing mistreatment of livestock
Animal Health Inspectors investigate the mistreatment of livestock, and will prosecute owners if they break laws about animal treatment.
If you have serious concerns about the welfare of farm animals in your area, please contact our Animal Health team.
All correspondence will be dealt with in complete confidence.
If you are concerned about the welfare other animals, including pets, please contact the RSPCA.
Horse passports
All horses, ponies and donkeys must have animal passports. For more information about the regulations and how to apply for a horse passport visit the Defra website Horse passports – Questions and Answers.
Pet passports
The pet passport scheme (also known as PETS) allows pet dogs, cats and ferrets (also rabbits, rodents and a list of others) to enter or re-enter the UK from the EU and a selection of long-haul destinations without having to stay in quarantine.
For your pet to qualify, strict criteria must be met. Full details about the PETS scheme are available on the Defra website.
Alternatively, phone the PETS helpline on 0870 241 1710.
