extortionate prices for passports

[Maesfen]

Royal Mail have lost one of mine, issued by Weatherbys. A replacement costs £37.50. fair enough, but can someone explain to me why, when the horse is microchipped, they need a vet to do a further markings document to prove it is the same horse? Doesn't anyone other than vets have a microchip readers and why do such issuing authorities not trust the chip info?

You should always send passports by either Recorded Delivery or Signed For delivery and insure for the amount a duplicate would cost you.

You should also copy/scan all the pages that concern the horse (name, breeding, owner, vaccinations, sketch, anything that's NOT in an empty passport and pertains to that horse) You should write the name of the horse in pencil and the date on each page before you copy it (otherwise apart from name it could be for any other horse) you can always rub it out again before you send it off. At least that way, if the worst does happen, you have a copy of the vaccinations so won't need to start again, your vet can just fill them in to the new passport.
Believe me, the hassle of doing that far outweighs the disadvantage of losing the original passport.

 

[popsdosh]

surely, popsdosh, the horse would have to have a passport with markings on as well? Not many people go to buy a horse will have a scanner....so how would you know if it was the right horse?

Like I say its in development so those are the sort of issues they are working on ,however scanners are not that pricey now. I am just talking about the future! It can be done with cattle already!

 

[Charlottedv]

Ive only dealt with wetherbys as both mine are passported with them, and they've been brilliant with both. One was just a simple change of ownership, was maybe 15 pounds (?) returned within two weeks. Other was when ponies passport mysteriously disappeared in a yard move, I didn't notice until vaccs time and had to panic order a duplicate. It was a minimal amount and came within 3 days at the end of December, I was thoroughly impressed as i managed to get her jabs sorted.

 

[Aoibhinn]

Prices are ridiculous. Think it's something around €70 to change the names on them over here, and with 3 to do that €210. Haven't even bothered to do any of them yet, and have two of them 4 years!

 

[sywell]

This is an interesting point as AFAIK there is a system being developed were the only passport the horse will have will be its MC all the details including vaccinations will be stored on it using the same technology as credit card chips

The Spanish alreday use this method

 

[sywell]

Prices are ridiculous. Think it's something around €70 to change the names on them over here, and with 3 to do that €210. Haven't even bothered to do any of them yet, and have two of them 4 years!

The regulation says that the original name must always remain on the passport in the UK name change is usually not possible but commercial sponsorship prefixes are expensine.

 

[Aoibhinn]

The regulation says that the original name must always remain on the passport in the UK name change is usually not possible but commercial sponsorship prefixes are expensine.

Apologies, didn't mean the horses names! The change of ownership i.e put my name on the passport in place of previous owners.

 

[sywell]

You should always send passports by either Recorded Delivery or Signed For delivery and insure for the amount a duplicate would cost you.

You should also copy/scan all the pages that concern the horse (name, breeding, owner, vaccinations, sketch, anything that's NOT in an empty passport and pertains to that horse) You should write the name of the horse in pencil and the date on each page before you copy it (otherwise apart from name it could be for any other horse) you can always rub it out








again before you send it off. At least that way, if the worst does happen, you have a copy of the vaccinations so won't need to start again, your vet can just fill them in to the new passport.
Believe me, the hassle of doing that far outweighs the disadvantage of losing the original passport.

As a PIO we gave up on recorded delivery as the signatures were illegable and the person who it was sent to said there was no one at the address at that time. In another case it took us 9 months to get the passports back from the Belfast Office of Royal Mail even though on their system it showed the time they arrived at the sorting depot in Belfast. We have for some years issued a seperate document call a Proof of Ownership which the vendor signs and the purchaser puts their address on and signs and sends in so the passport can always remain with the keeper of the horse. The passport is of course not a proof of ownership and the property of the PIO.

 

[diamonddogs]

It's about time the agencies were all standardised.

My mare that died came to me with a HPA passport (which didn't even require her height to be recorded) and I rang them to find out how to change the name. All they asked was I send them my name and address, and they would send me a set of stickers. No proof of ownership, nothing.

My current horse came to me from someone who'd rescued her from Ireland with just an application form from the Sport Horse Ireland agency. My employer at the time offered discounts on passports so obviously I approached them with the application form, which they refused, saying I needed to fill in their application form and get a UK vet to sign it off. So I contacted Sport Horse Ireland (the form was two years old - long story) asking if they would honour the details thereon, and they said yes, send it in and they'd ring me to get my card details.

They charged me £27 for the registration of a non-pedigree animal - they have a scale of charges, depending on what your horse does and what you want the passport for. It arrived within five working days.

 

[sywell]

I think many people may not realise there are two types of horse passport one is for registered horses that have a pedigree from a breed society which has a breeding population large enough to carry out a program for improvement of the breed or organisations for racing. The oher sort is animals for food and production and these are called ID only and are a basic registration document and most horses fall into this classification and the microchip is the way many of these horses are identified. The EU commision intended that there would be only one ID only passport issuer and wrote and told DEFRA that when they Audited DEFRA but DEFRA had already approved about 20 including an auction house and a slaughter house and said for historic reasons they could not do anything about it. All of this is in the public record.

 

[stormox]

If you buy a horse that is a breed -ie TB, iSH, Hanovarian, whatever, and it is microchipped and reg to that society, requiring expensive re-registration/ownership change, is it possible and legal to apply for the cheap type of passport, just for identification, with, say Horse Passport Agency or Irish Horseboard White passport, and not use the breed one if it is of no value to you?

 

[MissChaos]

If you buy a horse that is a breed -ie TB, iSH, Hanovarian, whatever, and it is microchipped and reg to that society, requiring expensive re-registration/ownership change, is it possible and legal to apply for the cheap type of passport, just for identification, with, say Horse Passport Agency or Irish Horseboard White passport, and not use the breed one if it is of no value to you?

No, it's not legal. You've got to stick with the original agency (also means you need to check with an agency if a horse's passport is AWOL but you think it was with that agency before applying for a new one with a cheaper agency).

 

[popsdosh]

If you buy a horse that is a breed -ie TB, iSH, Hanovarian, whatever, and it is microchipped and reg to that society, requiring expensive re-registration/ownership change, is it possible and legal to apply for the cheap type of passport, just for identification, with, say Horse Passport Agency or Irish Horseboard White passport, and not use the breed one if it is of no value to you?

FGS Dont encourage people to try that it is illegal! you cannot have two passports for one horse thats the very reason the regulations have been tightened up.

 

[popsdosh]

No, it's not legal. You've got to stick with the original agency (also means you need to check with an agency if a horse's passport is AWOL but you think it was with that agency before applying for a new one with a cheaper agency).

That agency then has to check with other PIOs to see if that microchip belongs with a passport !

 

[sywell]

If you buy a horse that is a breed -ie TB, iSH, Hanovarian, whatever, and it is microchipped and reg to that society, requiring expensive re-registration/ownership change, is it possible and legal to apply for the cheap type of passport, just for identification, with, say Horse Passport Agency or Irish Horseboard White passport, and not use the breed one if it is of no value to you?

Only the original passport issuer can issue a duplicate or replacement passport and it will be required to sign the horse out of human consumption Sexction IX. It would be a prosecutable offence to apply for a passport from another organisation.

 

[Firefly9410]

If you buy a horse that is a breed -ie TB, iSH, Hanovarian, whatever, and it is microchipped and reg to that society, requiring expensive re-registration/ownership change, is it possible and legal to apply for the cheap type of passport, just for identification, with, say Horse Passport Agency or Irish Horseboard White passport, and not use the breed one if it is of no value to you?

I know someone who did this. First because it was cheaper and second because she wanted to change the horses name. The horse was not microchipped and was sold to her when passports were just starting to become compulsory. It now has registration papers with breeding record but no passport as an Arab under one name and a generic passport as a grey horse under a different name. Madness.

 

[sywell]

I know someone who did this. First because it was cheaper and second because she wanted to change the horses name. The horse was not microchipped and was sold to her when passports were just starting to become compulsory. It now has registration papers with breeding record but no passport as an Arab under one name and a generic passport as a grey horse under a different name. Madness.

Some years ago at a breed show I was checking passports and an ID passport fell out of the breed society passport and I asked the owner what's this she said her vet had told her she needed a new DEFRA passport as the German passport was not valid. Many people think of a DEFRA passport there is not such thing it is a EU passport. I have meet EU people in Brussels and they are very practicle horse people as well as very efficient administrators and many of our problems arise because the horse is livestock in the rest of Europe and administrators are coming at problems from a very different angle. As an example in disease control all the places where horses are kept are registered holdings under the CAP when there is a disease ot break you know where horses are,how many in each area and what resources need to be allocated who the owner is is irrelevent.