Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what his Department’s requirements are for Disposing of a dead horse on privately owned land where that horse had not been micro-chipped and its owner could not be traced.

Dead horses should be disposed of at approved rendering or incineration facilities. Where the owner of a dead horse cannot be traced and it is on private land, responsibility for disposal lies with the land owner. In rare cases where there is no landowner, for example, on common land, the Local Authority has responsibility and Defra has at times been able to help with practical measures.