Your Questions Answered #2

I was asked the following questions on Twitter:

A few q's: If we implemented a drug-tracking system for horses, where would the funding come from? Gov or industry funded?

and if it were Gov funded, why should those who do not eat horse have to pay taxes so those that do eat it can?

To my knowledge, all proposals for systems of horse registration to date have required funding from horse owners through the charging of registration fees, as is the case for owners of dogs or even cars.

Estimates place the number of domesticated horses in Australia at about one million, but no-one knows for sure, because there is no registration system. As horses change owners more frequently than other companion animals, there would no doubt be fees required for transfer of ownership, as well as initial and perhaps yearly fees for simply registering a horse. A system keeping track of that many horses will require quite a number of government employees to maintain.

For a truly reliable system, all horses would need to be microchipped. Currently horses must be branded, however brands can be hard to read and difficult to trace. The requirement that horses be branded is not enforced, and as a result many horses remain unbranded.

To implant a microchip in a horse's neck requires a suitably qualified person, usually a vet. In my experience a standard visit from an equine vet costs more than $100, for travel, call out fee, examination of the horse, etc. The fee for implanting the microchip would be added to this. In the case of there being several horses on the property being seen at once, the basic charge for the visit may be spread between them, but if there is only one horse on a property, the "cost per horse" will clearly be higher.

The cost of microchipping would more than likely be covered by the horse owner, unless government funding could be secured.

It is very unlikely that the horse slaughter industry itself would provide any funding for such a system, seeing as they only bring in around $10 million a year from export.

As you can see there are many issues that need to be ironed out before a system could be implemented. Regarding taxpayers paying to regulate an industry they do not support... well I suppose that would be nothing new.