Both Chester Zoo and Bristol Zoo are BALAI approved and both permit entry to assistance dogs. Bristol has a very detailed statement on its website explaining that it can only admit assistance dogs that are registered with certain organisations because all their "dogs adhere to the highest health, behaviour/training and welfare standards" and "It is essential that we are able to guarantee such standards, to fulfil our biosecurity regulations," It also explains that assistance dogs are not permitted in certain areas (e.g. walkthroughs) or where there presence is known to cause distress to the species on display. Facilities at Bristol Zoo | Plan you Bristol Zoo visit online | Bristol Zoo
Then the directive itself is very conflicting as taken from the direct.gov website; The Balai Directive (Article 4 of Council Directive 92/65/EEC) sets out the conditions for the import and export of various species of animals within the EU which are not covered by other legislation. It does not apply to domestic animals such as cattle, pigs, goats, sheep, horses, poultry and pets.” I believe the difference maybe that these will generally have a free movement within the U.K. I have no doubt it’s different if bringing them from outside the U.K. but most assistance dogs will be “homegrown” and I’m sure any from the EU will have to have travel passports stating they are disease free anyway? It also goes on to say that any approved holding can apply for a waiver of quarantine rules anyway which I would suspect most bodies would in this case if it did indeed include assistance dogs.
This is misquoted, and your suspicions are wrong again - and, you are mixing up the legislation and the departments which control it. BALAI controls the movement of non-domestic animals between EU countries as stated, but to do so a zoo must be 'Approved'. To get the approval, movements of domestic animals not covered by BALAI, in and out of the zoo, are controlled similarly. Approval can be withdrawn, as I stated above, and currently has been for some major collections. The domestic animals you list do not have free movement within the UK. The cloven hoofed animals have to have movement books kept for all movement and can only be moved between premises registered with the local Trading Standards with a CPH number. Equines (domestic and wild) must have passports, which are not passports in the human sense, but effectively registration documents. The waiver you refer to is for exemption from rabies quarantine for imports of animals (mammals) from foreign countries, and is applied on a case-by-case basis and granted where strict health requirements are met. It has nothing to do with internal movement of animals, assistance dogs or otherwise. With decades of direct experience, I have posted, with the aim of correcting each post of miss-information, and hope the moderators are happy with the slight deviation from the thread.
An email response to enquiry with the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) about BALAI: Thank you for your enquiry regarding zoos, assistance dogs and the BALAI Directive. BALAI has no direct input to the Equality Act. Unfortunately we are unable to help with your query; however you can contact the Government Equalities Office at [email protected] The phone number for general enquiries is 03000 200229 if you prefer this option.
An email response to enquiry with the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA) about BALAI: Thank you for email and clarification of your enquiry. BALAI is a separate European directive; this has no bearing on assistance dogs entering zoological collections except that of safari parks where the animals are freely outside. As mentioned in my previous email, I cannot give any further clarification to the matters you have raised and I therefore request that you contact the Government Equalities Office at [email protected] The phone number for general enquiries is 03000 200229 if you prefer this option.
Can you point us to the exact legislation/regulations you mention? Otherwise what you say is just hearsay
I did - very carefully, four times. Given the overwhelming 'expert' opinion published here, please take all our very limited direct experience as nothing more than 'here-say' - and therefore totally irrelevant.
Jimmy's Farm & Wildlife Park allows dogs in most areas of the zoo (except for the Outback Safari, the Tropical House and the Butterfly House).
Around 50% of licensed zoos in the Czech republic allow dogs on leash into their areal (with exception of walk-though enclosures and houses). Some zoos even allow their employees to have their own dogs during working time with them (for example Prague and Dvur Kralove). Zoos that dont allow dogs usually mention cramped visitors area, bad past experience or similar reasons for their decision, never any BALAI or veterinary risk. Personally I find prohibition of dogs in zoos because of infection control to be strange. Each zoo is visited by stray cats, foxes, badgers, rats, mice, bats, stoats and other wild and feral mammals in such huge numbers that pampered family dogs, vaccinated and on leash, pose no meaningful additional risk.
If you read the BALAI regulations, they are very clear. To repeat - and my apologies for having to do this for the n'th time - if a premises is 'Approved' for mammals, then any mammal entering that premises from an 'un-Approved' body must go into isolation. The regulation does exempt any spp or individuals. The fact that some countries (or even inspectors within countries) choose not to apply the directive in the same way as others, and ignore the parts which they consider don't apply to themselves, provides a clear illustration of how EU legislation is expected to work.
I am sure that you are interpreting those regulations wrong. In reality, it is impossible to keep for example rats away from any normal landscape zoo, no matter how good your perimeter fence is or how frequent you do pest control. Really tight regulation is applied only to approved quarantine. Non-EU sourced wild hot-blooded animals need to go through it if they are imported into the Czech republic. Only a handful of EU-approved quarantines exist in my country because they are costly to run. Such places are akin to high-guarded jails. Double fence, isolated rooms, thick mesh everywhere, prohibied access for people, people working there cant care for other animals, cameras, desinfection on entry/exit, rigid work protocols, bureaucracy, permanent state veterinary watch etc. Domestic animals from non-EU countries have their own laws, they usually dont need to go through quarantine, they just need to comply with export/import laws and local vet regulation - that varies by source country and species.
My interpretation of the regulations is irrelevant - it is the administration of such by the Governments of the countries (and it would appear, individual localities) which determines what we have to work with. To repeat - our regulatory authority will rescind our BALAI Approved status if a mammal is brought onto our premises which has not either come from another Approved body, or goes into isolation. This is NOT a matter or interpretation or opinion; these are the rules which regulation our operation. Once Approval is lost it is not automatically regained, and I have already referred to a number of large UK collections which have had theirs taken away. A simple Google search will separate the facts from uninformed personal speculation. The 'high-guarded jails' you describe above, are precisely what is needed in the UK for third country imports without quarantine waivers. Your description (though perhaps interesting to other readers), is not necessary as we own and operate such a unit. This is the reason a number of species are featured on the gallery... The BALAI regulations control captive animals and not wild rats or foxes. They are supposed to produce an EU wide basic level of standards, to remove the need for post-import National quarantine and facilitate animal movements. The fact that they are being implemented at varying standards and 'interpretations', brings the system into question, and raises the issue of discrimination against those institutions who have to operate under a tighter and more onerous 'interpretation' of the regulations. It will be interesting to see what effect Brexit has, if it eventually happens...
My apologies for the spell-checker, and being outside the short edit window - regulate of course, not regulation.
Each EU country has to implement EU-wide regulations but each country is free to implement more harsh/restrictive version if they wish. It looks like the UK (or only England? I dont understans your govermental system much) simply decided to be very nickpicking and go overboard with what EU regulation actually asks for. If you want to blame somebody for discimination, look at people on your side of the channel. We dont know at all what form of Brexit will Brits actually pick. Might be soft, might be hard and everything inbetween. But I speculate that the UK will make it much harder to import animals from the EU. To sustain todays status quo where animals can be relativelly easily transported between the UK and continent asumes that the UK will accept and implement all new EU laws and regulations regarding veterinary rules in the years to come. I cant see that happening, Brits are too proud to accept tyrany of unelected EU bureaucrats. They want independence.
It could be called nit-picking - it could be called simply apply the letter of the law, rather than ignoring the parts which don't suit you - this illustrates a basic divide between the approach to legislation taken by different countries. The 'high guarded jails' accurately describe the import system implemented in the UK between the end of the last war and the introduction of BALAI. It was the basic system which all zoos worked with. It was a result of an bureaucratic, ingrained, island mentality which distrusted foreigners, and assumed that their standards would be lower than those which had kept the UK free of many diseases (including rabies) and allowed it a trading advantage with other wider nations. The same 'island' approach can be seen with the import and export controls applied by Australia for example, for animals, plants - and humans. The free(er) movement of animals resulting from the implementation of BALAI, presumes that the same standards are enforced on both sides of the movement. You are saying that they dont - which as I said, brings the system into question...
Whilst I'm not stupid enough to question your expertise/experience in this area I would say that this only proves the approach taken to this legislation by different counties. I can think of various bits of UK-wide and EU-wide law which are applied inconsistency (if at all) in the UK between councils, police forces and other government bodies. Perhaps nit-picking, but also factual.
The insolationist system that is traditional in the UK gives you many advantages I guess and I respect that. But the EU approach of wide collaboration of nations is not bad either. The collective affort of all EU member countries and some non-EU countries achieved to effectivelly eliminate rabies from the EU. Last year, there were maybe 3 cases along the eastern border and that it is. And unless Russia, Belarus, Moldavia and Ukraine manage to eradicate it on their part of border, it is the best that can be done now because many thousand long eastern border is impossible to be effectivelly fenced off. On the other side, the UK is known for its bad situation with bovine tuberculosis and it even affects your zoos now. In my country it has been eradicated since many many decades (we even managed to eradicate African swine fever last year, an unique result in Europe). Here I wish we could cut the UK from free movement to protect my country. But well, it is unavoidable to accept that risk as a necessary evil of our EU memberhip. Pros and cons like with everything in life. Peace.
You are absolutely right, yes - the Zoo Licensing Act is very much a case in point, as would appear from the above comments about the implementation of the BALAI itself, within the UK.
Indeed, often new legislation is passed because authorities can't be bothered to properly enforce (or tweak) previous legislation. The result is previously law-abiding people have new hurdles to jump (and often associated fees to pay) and those who pay fast and lose continue to do so (sometimes arguably rightly so) -DWAL rules are another classic case in point.
'Isolationist' is either an accidental or deliberate miss-quote, but you are quite right about the practical differences with regard to disease eradication along a long land border being quite different to those on an island. I am sorry but I have no direct knowledge of the situation regarding TB - but I guess what has happened in some parts of the UK is only the start .. My comments were confined to the BALAI position we have directly been involved with. Presumably Czech zoos dont allow their keepers to bring their pet goats or cows to work too; is it just dogs...?
