News
BD Rules Update: Equine Register
- Written By: British Dressage
- Published: Wed, 22 Dec 2021 16:09 GMT
British Dressage (BD) is encouraging its members, as responsible horse owners, to help ensure greater data accuracy, traceability and biosecurity of the national equine herd by making sure their equines are listed on the Central Equine Database as a requirement of our horse registration process from 1 January 2022. FAQs UPDATED 22/12/21
It is a requirement by law that all equines living in the UK are registered on the CED, which currently contain over 1.5 million records. The CED is designed to protect all British equines and their owners by providing the national core data that underpins essential services, such as equine lifetime traceability, biosecurity, disease surveillance and control, food chain security, animal welfare, fraud prevention and border security. Members can check if their horses are already listed by using the National ChipChecker - if you horse appears when searched, it's got a record. Most horses with a UK passport and microchip should be listed as the PIO will have passed the info over to the CED.
We’re also strongly recommending that members sign up to Equine Register’s Digital Stable to facilitate this process and ensure your records are correct and up to date. This also helps to provide more effective traceability and bio-security measures to protect horse welfare. The Digital Stable provides a secure link to
the Central Equine Database (CED), supplied and managed by the Equine Register on behalf of the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). Members will be able to create their ‘Digital Stable’, which will show the data held on the CED about them and all the horses officially recorded as being owned by them.
As well as the data held, the Digital Stable enables users to record the location of their owned equines and their vaccination status (both current and historic). This information supports traceability and biosecurity protecting you and your horses from infectious diseases through live targeted national disease alerts that are relevant.
To get started, members simply need to create a free account online. For user safety, this process requires verification of identity, using the same state-of-the-art secure digital verification systems used by banks, governments and the NHS. This protects the users and their equine data from criminals who might try to impersonate them online to make fraudulent claims.
The secure ID verification process only happens once as part of the registration process. Please note that this data is only used to verify your identity and as soon as the process is completed, the information supplied is deleted and not stored.
Once sign up with the Digital Stable has been completed, users will be invited to download the free Digital Stable App to your mobile phone, where owned equine information will be automatically available as a secure online record, referred to as ‘digital passport/smartcard’. This Smartcard can then be checked at BD venues and events to underpin biosecurity and help protect competitors and their equines when they compete.
The need for accurate national data was highlighted by the Equine Influenza outbreak in 2019, which affected so many BD competitions, as well as the Equine Herpes outbreak in Europe earlier this year. The use of Equine Register’s systems by BD Members will help keep BD competitions, competitors and equines safe and play an important role in the protection of all UK equines.
British Dressage’s Chief Executive Jason Brautigam commented; “Creating an alliance with the Central Equestrian Database and Equine Register as been one of our aims since it was first launched. In leading the way with requiring registration, BD is acting in the best interests of the national herd, as well as keeping members and their horses safe, while helping them to fulfil their legal obligations as horse owners.
The requirement is in place from the New Year, although there will be a gradual phasing in over the course of 2022 to allow members sufficient time to adapt to the new process. It’s quick and easy to get started and already being used by horse owners across the UK. Thank you to members for embracing this additional requirement, you’re helping to be a trailblazer on this important step in equine welfare.”
To help members learn more about the CED, assist with the registration process and why you should create your own Digital Stable, BD has produced a helpful information sheet with FAQs (issued 21.12.21 and updated 22.12.21):
