International trade: Customer Information Notes - GEN/09/18
UK Exports Certification Partnership
Purpose
1. Further to CIN No. GEN 08/162, to advise exporters of livestock, livestock genetics and meat of developments on details of UKECP.
Background
2. The UK Exports Certification Partnership exists to:
- liaise with the UK livestock and livestock genetics and meat industries to establish export market priorities. Regular 6-weekly meetings of industry representatives, Devolved Administrations and Defra officials are held to report on progress of existing work and coordinate approaches to new markets according to the industry-prioritised list;
- prioritise and help coordinate missions (including the use of Defra agents) to negotiate export health certificates with countries outside the EU. Face to face negotiations are a very effective way to assure countries of the UK’s animal health status, and to agree details of certification that can sometimes take several weeks or months to negotiate remotely. With the additional resource, we are able to significantly increase the number of these missions, and in turn, the likelihood of quick resolution in negotiations;
- Defra and livestock industry representatives work together to draft and follow through the agreement of export health certification and related documents.
3. In this pilot partnership, the work of UKECP will concentrate on exports to third countries (outside the EU) where a useable export health certificate does not already exist.
Commodities covered by UKECP
4. UKECP’s work currently covers the following commodities:
- Livestock for breeding – pigs, cattle, sheep, goats and camelids.
- Livestock genetic material (i.e. semen, embryos and ova) from the species listed above.
- Meat, meat products and processed meat from the species listed above destined for human consumption.
Process
5. General enquiries on export issues including export health certification should be directed to Animal Health; either Central Operations for Export at Carlisle or your local Animal Health office (if the export work for your area has not yet been transferred to Central Operations at Carlisle). Animal Health will retain responsibility for queries relating to existing certificates, a list of which can be found on the Defra website.
6. If the certificate you require is not on the list of available certificates, please contact Animal Health first to check whether a certificate exists but is temporarily unavailable. If there is no certificate and it is for one of the commodities covered by UKECP, please then contact UKECP via the website www.ukecp.com to request the drafting of a new certificate. Please complete the Contact Form, and your request will be dealt with accordingly.
Success so far
7. Since the launch of the partnership three months ago, UKECP has been successful in securing eight new markets for livestock/genetics, including certification for breeding pigs to Cambodia, bovine semen to Brazil and, most recently, porcine semen to Hong Kong.
For more information
8. As the partnership progresses, further detailed information will become available on both Defra's International Trade web pages, and the UKECP website.
Issued by: International Animal Health
Page published: 23 February 2009