PE2130, which was lodged by James A Mackie, calls on the Parliament to urge the Scottish Government to introduce a ban on the removal of all hair from a horse’s tail, leaving a bare stump, other than for medical reasons. We previously considered the petition in March, when we agreed to write to the Government to seek further information on the work to update the “Code of Practice for the Welfare of Equidae”, including timescales for completing the update and how the petitioner and other stakeholders might contribute to the process.
In the Scottish Government’s response, which was sent to the committee in April, it was stated that the new equine code was being drafted by stakeholders and that the Government was confident that a
“sufficiently wide-ranging and varied base of equine expertise”
was already contributing to the development of the new code. The Government anticipated that the code would be published by late summer, but there is no evidence that that happened.
In addition, in their submissions, the petitioner and the charity Animal Concern suggest that a number of organisations are supportive of a ban. They also point to the decision that was taken by the Great Yorkshire Show to ban all horses with shaved tails from any competition or exhibition.
Do members have any comments or suggestions for action? Given that we were promised that something would be published by the end of the summer, which did not happen, it might be appropriate for us to keep the petition open a little bit longer and to write to the Minister for Agriculture and Connectivity to ask for a progress report and a rather more clear timeline for the publication of the Scottish Government’s equine code.