Livestock Movement Rules to Change January 10, 2014 12:00 am The livestock movement rules in England are to change, following an announcement from DEFRA Secretary Owen Paterson at the Oxford Farming Conference. However, the changes will not be implemented until 2016 and 2017. The reason, ostensibly, is to allow the RPA to bed in the new BPS payment system, before having to make changes to the livestock recording arrangements. The changes are largely those set out in Richard Macdonald’s 2011 Farming Regulation Taskforce report into red tape in agriculture (see Bulletin 05(11)). They are; removing Sole Occupancy Authorities (SOA) and Cattle Tracing System (CTS) links increasing the distance sheep farmers may move stock from their main holding without the need to report it from 5 miles to 10 miles removing the need to report movements to temporary grazing within 10 miles These changes are being billed as a reduction in ‘red-tape’ with DEFRA estimating the savings to the industry to be £70m over ten years. However, CTS links and SOAs are used by many livestock farmers and the changes may actually complicate management in some cases. For more detail on this complicated topic see our Note of January 2013. The six-day standstill rule will be reviewed once these changes have been fully implemented.
