Animal health & welfare

The animal health team works with local farmers and livestock keepers to protect farm animals and all other livestock.

We have a statutory duty to enforce legislation to ensure the health and welfare of farmed and other livestock, and to protect human health. We do this by ensuring high standards of safety, traceability and quality of animal products entering the food chain.

We also licence performing animals and act on information about illegally imported animals.

For more information contact animal health officers - Karin Rhodes or Joanne White 01925 442650

For an emergency out of office hours please contact 01925 444400

Advice

Animal health officers provide advice and guidance to the agricultural community to help with compliance and ease the burden of newly generated legislation. Much of this new legislation has arisen from lessons learned from recent foot and mouth outbreaks and the emergence of BSE. More recently, European Union Directives and Regulations have had a significant and continuing effect on those within the farming and agricultural industry.

On a day to day basis we provide advice by telephone on subjects such as:

• identification and tagging of animals
• movement licensing and records
• emerging farming issues, eg tuberculosis testing
• changes in legislation
  

Information

Foot & mouth

For up to date information on foot & mouth disease please visit the relevant section of the Defra website.

For guidance on movements during the present foot & mouth outbreak please visit the Defra website.

There is an emergency plan in place should there be a foot and mouth outbreak affecting the Warrington area. For more information contact us on 01925 442650.

Bluetongue

From the 7 August 2008 the Bluetongue protection zone will extend to Warrington as well as other areas of England. For more information please visit the latest updates on the Defra website. Declaration and Publication of Declaration.

For the latest information about Bluetongue please visit the relevant section of the Defra website.

Please view these documents for information on the declaration of a temporary control zone and for movement guidance and licences.

In the light of these current disease outbreaks it is as important as ever to have high standards of bio-security and to adhere completely to the movement licence conditions. To speed up notification of movements and ensure that you notify us within the given time you can fax as well as post your Animal MovementLicences. Fax number 01925442564

Avian influenza (bird flu)

Please view our page on avian influenza (bird flu).

Animal imports

Great Britain is currently free from rabies. To prevent the introduction of rabies and other infectious diseases any animal coming into Great Britain must be imported correctly. Although there is a PET Passport/ travel scheme for domestic pets which enables animals to travel more freely with their owners, please visit the Defra website for up to date information. 

We have an emergency plan for illegally imported animals or suspected rabid animals. If you require any further information or have information about an illegally imported animal please contact us on 01925 442650 as soon as you suspect there may be a problem.

Farm inspection and transportation

Please view our page for information on the role of animal health officers in farm inspection and transportation including roadside checks.     

Animal licensing

Please view our page for information on all types of animal licensing.

Farm feed hygiene

The Feed Hygiene Regulations EC183/2005 came into effect on 1 January 2006. It applies to businesses that make, use, transport, store or sell animal feeds. This includes most livestock farms, arable farms that grow, use or sell crops for feed use, and also fish farms, feed hauliers, importers of feed and feed storage businesses.  Please visit our farm feed hygiene page for more information.