Jim Paice sacked -- David Heath appointed in his place

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Yippee Jim Paice -- Farming Minister at DEFRA and the murderer of NED -- has been sacked. He may have been dubbed 'the dairy farmers' friend but he certainly wasn't the British horse industry's friend and hopefully his sacking was at least part due to the fact that he announced the closing on NED on the very day that the AHT published an official report proving that it would be impossible to monitor outbreaks of such diseases as African Horse Sickness without NED. Don't know much about his replacement David Heath but as MP for Somerset and Frome he certainly comes from a very horsey area, so I for one will be resending my letter of protest about the shutting down of NED, this time addressed to David Heath and Owen Patterson (Caroline Spelmann has been sacked too :-)) to make sure they see it and it doesn't get dropped in the bin in the reshuffle.
 
Sadly, and though the responsibility for departmental decisions falls upon the relevant minister, the decisions taken, to move in any given direction, are made by faceless Government officials, and it's the minister who carries the can.

The simple and sad fact is that very few Government Ministers have the IQ to work out the policies for themselves, and they are all mouth pieces, nothing more or less. It's at the Defra offices in Whitehall where the decisions are made, and to whom all pleas should be addressed. Should you elect to go down that route, I wish you well. We now have EID tagging of livestock, the whole system is a complete and utter shambles, with different agencies applying their own interpretation to the rules, taking arbitrary routes, and each offering conflicting conditions.

The whole system is chaotic. I wish you well in seeking a reinstatement of NED!! ;)

Alec.
 
This is the e-mail that I sent

Dear David Heath and Owen Paterson

As a member of the DEFRA Equine Experts Group and a winner of the BEF / SEIB Meritoire Award for outstanding service to British breeding who has supported Ned from its very beginning and been involved in many of its developments, I am deeply concerned regarding DEFRA’s decision to cease funding the National Equine Database, which was made very recently by your predecessors – and on the very day that the Animal Health Trust issued a very carefully researched report proving that a central equine database is essential in the tracking and prevention of spread of equine diseases, especially such new exotic ones as African Horse Sickness. What measures will you now put in place as matter of urgency to replace NED, while also bearing in mind that DEFRA has to uphold the EU laws on equi...ne passports, which require that such a central database exists for precisely this reason?

The ill-thought out decision to cease funding this scheme, while hundreds of equines in this country are at their most vulnerable time in decades, will only increase cases of abandonment and neglect.

The horse passport was introduced by the UK government and should therefore by administered by it or by an accredited organisation. Unfortunately Mr Paice, who had very little experience of the horse world, had a doctrine dislike of all equine passport law, believing them – against all evidence provided by all sectors of the horse industry – to be an unnecessary result of the EU Zootechnic regulations -- and the destruction of NED was part of his policy to ensure that horse passport legislation became impossible to enforce

As a concerned citizen of this country, a horse and animal lover, I demand that DEFRA continue funding the National Equine Database and looks to resolving the issue on a long term basis for the good of the UK horse world and its many voting supporters.

Yours sincerely

Celia I Clarke

I'll let you all know if I have any meaningful reply :-).

BTW, Alec you have got it wrong as far as DEFRA admin people being the ones that wanted to get rid of NED. Itr was a personal crusade by Jim Paice -- as anyone involved in the consultation process knows -- and the people in the Horse Passport Office and the Zootechnics dept tried every way to get round the way he was interpreting the government's policy of cost cutting across the board as an exuse to get rid of his particular bete noire. Sadly his doctrinaire views won the day, but at least it did not help his political career when the timing of his decision was so horrendously ill-timed. Even David Cameron could not overlookd that I would imagine!
 
Alec Swan said:
Sadly, and though the responsibility for departmental decisions falls upon the relevant minister, the decisions taken, to move in any given direction, are made by faceless Government officials, and it's the minister who carries the can.

The simple and sad fact is that very few Government Ministers have the IQ to work out the policies for themselves, and they are all mouth pieces, nothing more or less. It's at the Defra offices in Whitehall where the decisions are made, and to whom all pleas should be addressed. Should you elect to go down that route, I wish you well. We now have EID tagging of livestock, the whole system is a complete and utter shambles, with different agencies applying their own interpretation to the rules, taking arbitrary routes, and each offering conflicting conditions.

The whole system is chaotic. I wish you well in seeking a reinstatement of NED!! ;)

Alec.
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Sounds a bit like the head of Animal Identification and disease control.
 
Quite frankly in the current state of this country I cannot see the point in throwing tax payers money at a computer system that is expensive for users and that has a huge error rate. The NED has never achieved its objectives, the data it contains is not current or accurate contravening parts of the Data Protection Act and therefore could not assist in any great way should there be an outbreak of disease.

Passport legislation is in places ridiculous and unwieldy, it is not enforced universally and will not be because it is expensive to have people enforce it, a number of horses still do not have a passport, which is unfair on those that do comply with the requirement.
 
Maesfen said:
Have to agree with you Karyn, NED was a bit of a joke.
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Other EU countries have databases that work so we look a bit useless if we cannot get one to work one I use has 3.5 million horses on it. I still say that not having passport issuers who understood the reality of dealing with equine people and just so called experts who actually did not understand would always lead to failure. The PIOs when they supported Ned were called stakeholders and told they would be involved when it came down to it at the meetings held by NED there were stuck with their own views and id not listern to the advice given
 
Another point is that, although it is a legal requirement, horses are being sold without their passports being updated. We sold a mare 8 years ago. She has recently come up for sale and, at the current owners invitation, we went to see her. The person who bought our mare transferred her into her ownership but subsequently sold her. We know that this mare has had at least 4 other owners since but none of them have transferred the ownership so, whether we had a database or not, if horses ownership is not being recorded, the database can only give an indication of horse whereabouts. We recently went to see another horse which the person had owned for two years and that had not been transferred into her ownership either.
 
Quite agree maggiemoto and there are many more horses that have died and never been reported as such, the whole thing has been a farce in this country and once again it is the responsible horse owner and the British Taxpayer that has paid the price.

A growing number of horse have been abandoned and carcasses have been dumped on roadsides, think of the disease implications of that one, but guess what, they have no id chip! 100 horses were placed in a field near me a year or so ago with inadequate water supply, NOT ONE had a chip or could be identified in any way,they stayed right until day the notice said they would be sold, all of them were moved NOTHING was done, all of them ended up in Belgium and were used for meat, with no valid passports!

I think that we have given this database a chance to work, a lot of money has been thrown at it and it does not work, so I agree it should be scrapped there is no more money in the tax payers pot for this. Weather a more fit for purpose database, funded from the private sector arises from it remains to be seen, it certainly can be done on a budget to much better effect than the NED.

If it does happen then it needs to created with full consultation with all those involved in Equines and not just a selected few.
 
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