Keeping and moving animals

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.

Keeping livestock

'Livestock' refers to sheep, goats, cattle, pigs, deer, horses and poultry.

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 website:

• Defra – Livestock identification and movements

For more about the law regarding the keeping of animals, including advice about journey times and the types of transportation required, see the Trading Standards Institute (TSI) website:

• TSI – Animal health and welfare

Horse and pet passports

All horses, ponies and donkeys must have animal passports. You can also get passports allowing pets to enter the UK without having to stay in quarantine.

Find out what you need to do on our page horse and pet passports.

Animal feed

If your business transports animal feed, you must be registered with Trading Standards and comply with animal feed regulations.

To find out how to register and download forms, see our page animal feed.

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:

• Defra – Controls on animal by-products