Defra's Response to Illegal Export of Dartmoor Hill Ponies Report

This is the response we had from Defra about our report exposing the illegal live export of wild ponies to Ireland and Europe:

"The government is committed to improving animal welfare.  Where horses are transported, they should be handled and cared for in strict accordance with the relevant welfare rules.

As regards the minimum value legislation you refer to in your letter, minimum values were introduced to Great Britain in 1937 for working horses and in 1950 for ponies.  This legislation was last updated in 1978 and it never applied to trade from Northern Ireland.  It has been overtaken by the other animal health and welfare legislation, most recently the EU legislation on the protection of animals during transport (Council Regulation (EC)1/2005) which came into effect in January 2007.  The more recent animal welfare and animal health legislation provides for a system of inspections and checks to be put in place to make sure that horses are healthy and fit for transport.  The Animal Health and Veterinary Laboratories Agency undertakes risk based inspections of equines destined for export, normally at premises where horses are first loaded onto a vehicle.  Local authorities also undertake inspection work, and are responsible for investigating breaches of the legislation with a view to prosecution.

In 2012, local authorities and the AHVLA inspected just under 2,700 consignments of equidae during transport at a wide variety of different locations in Great Britain.  A total of 73 welfare infringements were discovered, representing just under 3% of the total inspected.  The low instance of infringements indicates that the current level of inspections is appropriate to the risks involved.

I hope this helps."

There is absolutely no expression of interest in the illegal activity we uncovered or the scale of it - with false registration numbers, no documentation (for ponies or journey logs etc), overcrowded lorries and lorries travelling illegal routes this has clearly not been an area that Defra have been, or are willing, to take interest in.  If they had chosen to inspect the illegal activity lorries their statistics would have been somewhat different!

When there is a known "risk" period in the autumn surrounding the markets, this is when the checks should be escalated at the ports.  As usual, for Defra the statistics are more important than the welfare of the wild ponies and the enforcement of the laws that are supposed to protect them.  Let's hope the stallions are removed from the moors soon.  The mass overbreeding has rendered the ponies valueless and subject to illegal activity - by stopping the overbreeding, it would stop the source of all this illegal activity.

The full copy of our original report exposing the illegal live export of Dartmoor Hill Ponies can be found here: http://www.people4ponies.co.uk/liveexports.html

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