The EU Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health (SCoFCAH) has passed reforms to the EU’s existing horse passport system to boost identification of horses and prevent their meat being sold as beef, if they are slaughtered. It follows the 2013 horsemeat scandal, where horsemeat was introduced illicitly or accidentally into the EU beef meat food chain.
Under the new EU horse passport regulation, all foals must be issued with a single passport, having a unique identification number, before their first birthday. These records will be stored electronically on centralised national databases, which must be set up by 1 July 2016, at the latest.
All horses born after 1 July 2009 will need to be micro-chipped, so their records can be checked and updated and serve as a passport, noting the horse’s movements during its lifetime. It will also serves as a medical record. A European Commission note said technical security features aimed at impeding the falsification of passports have been mandated by the new regulation.
Outgoing EU health commissioner Tonio Borg said: "As promised, this is another lesson drawn from last year’s horsemeat fraud: the rules endorsed by the member states will strengthen the horse passport system in place. I believe that closer cooperation will enhance the safeguards which prevent non-food quality horsemeat from ending up on our plates."
The Commission note added: "One of the basic aims is to prevent the inadvertent or fraudulent slaughter for human consumption of horses which must be excluded from the food chain."
It added that forcing member states to have compulsory centralised databases would help regulators better control the issuing of horse passports where this is carried out by different passport-issuing bodies. "It will also substantially simplify, for the keepers, the procedures for updating the identification data in both the passport and the database of the issuing bodies," it added. The new rules on micro-chipping and registration will come into force from 1 January 2016, six months before the deadline for creating national databases.