I mentioned earlier that DAD-Net is holding an e-consultation on threats to livestock diversity. There was a bit of discussion on the nature of the threats last week. One of the more interesting contributions came from Dafydd Pilling of the animal genetic resources group at FAO. He offered “an example in which the threat does not correspond exactly to any of the categories listed in the background document.”
The threat in question is the financial burden imposed on the owners of mountain ponies by the EU “horse passport†scheme. The story can be traced by visiting each of the following web pages in turn:
Passport threat to wild ponies
Time running out for wild ponies
Ponies saved from passport threat
Our little ponies facing extinction
Carneddau wild ponies
The problem goes back to 2004, and we noted it two years ago, but not the dénouement.
Three years ago the European Union passed a law that all such animals had to have a passport and be tagged. This costs £50 per animal, and at that time the ponies were only worth around £15 each so it just wasn’t going to be financially viable for us to keep protecting them.
Then seven local farmers got together, managed to secure Objective One funding and set up the Carneddau Ponies Association to fund and carry out this work.
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We also want them classed as a rare breed, which would allow us to sell a group on one passport instead of individually.
Looks like livestock diversity is no less at risk from some EU regulation than the crop kind. Although Dr Pilling does add that “EU rules on ear tagging of cattle had been amended” when they were found to pose “a threat to extensive livestock management practices” in Europe. I’ll try to find out more about that one.