Neigh To Horse Passports

Horse owners face fine or jail from today if they do not have passports for their animals. The passports are required by the EU to control the quality of meat entering the human food chain - they eat horses on the continent.

According to the Telegraph, while half a million passports have been issued, anything up to half a million animals do not yet have a passport, which must be shown when moving premises, entering competitions, breeding, etc.

The government has twice delayed implementation of the law, because so few people had acquired the passports: once in January 2004, and again in June 2004.

The government says that if Britain does not comply with the law to the EU Commission's satisfaction, the Commission may withdraw approval for around 60% of veterinary medicines.

So what does it mean?

It means Britain can no longer make the law for itself, because our government is no longer competent to decide this matter, and there is now no one Parliament can bring to account and force a change if the policy and law on horse passports is thought to be unsatisfactory.

And it suggests that the most effective form of resistance to unwelcome bureaucratic laws which do not have general support is to ignore them. The horse passport requires a certain amount of cooperation among horse owners if it is to work.

Notice too, that it is the UK government that gets the flak for failing to derogate from the EU regulation: the principle of subservience to EU law is not questioned, and nor is the EU criticised for creating the regulation in the first place.