The United States Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) is amending the import regulations for horses.

The amendments are intended to better align US regulations with international standards, allow more flexibility for importing, and add further safeguards to protect against the introduction of pests or diseases into the United States.

The changes include:

• increasing the number of days horses exported from regions free from contagious equine metritis (CEM) are allowed to spend in a CEM-affected region and re-enter the United States without testing from 60 days to 90 days
• requiring an import permit for horses transiting through CEM-affected regions and horses imported from regions affected with African horse sickness
• adding requirements for health certifications so that health certifications properly attest to the health of the imported horse
• requiring that horses transiting Central America or the West Indies comply with the same regulations that apply to horses directly imported from these regions
• adding requirements for shipping containers, including disinfection requirements and measures to ensure horses are transported safely
• removing Los Angeles and Miami from the list of ports designated to receive horse imports
• clarifying that APHIS will refuse entry to horses arriving in the same shipment as horses dead upon arrival
• adding requirements that stallions and mares must be transported to the approved state in a sealed vehicle, and that seal may be broken only by an APHIS representative, state animal health official, or accredited veterinarian under certain circumstances at the horse’s destination
• miscellaneous other small clarifications and corrections

You can read the entire final rule, Import Regulations for Horses, here. It will be effective on Oct. 16, 2023.

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