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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to improve livestock (a) registration and (b) inspection, in the context of (i) avian influenza and (ii) the recommendations in Dame Glenys Stacey's report entitled Farm Inspection and Regulation Review, published in December 2018.

Since the 1 September 2024 in Scotland and 1 October 2024 in England and Wales registration has been a legal requirement for anyone owning poultry or other captive birds, with the exception of certain psittacines and passerines, even if only kept as pets. This builds on the requirement for keepers to register if they kept 50 or more poultry in Great Britain which had been in force since 2005. New online registration services have been launched to minimise the burden where possible on keepers in complying with these new requirements.

The new registration requirements address repeated recommendations from highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) outbreak lessons identified reviews since at least 2016, as well as the 2018 Dame Glenys Stacey review. The requirements will aid in the prevention and control of notifiable avian disease outbreaks, by facilitating both surveillance activities and communication to bird keepers. In particular, getting biosecurity and outbreak messaging out to hard-to-reach groups including small flock keepers.