The British Alpaca Society has been working to improve export opportunities with EU countries. This is in response to concerns that there is a decreasing availability of quality alpaca genetics being shared between the UK and Europe.

The EU can no longer easily import alpacas from Australia, New Zealand and South America and stock from the US/Canada has a minimum of 18-month lead time. The British Alpaca Society believe that there is potentially an issue developing whereby the improvement in the alpaca breed in Europe is going to slow.

BAS are aware of the restrictions on showing and/or alpaca movements that some European Societies places on their members if they do import from the UK; although this has not stopped all imports, it has certainly slowed the movement down.

When the EU changed the rules surrounding bTB testing for exporting herds, the UK government (DEFRA) decided to add a second level of biosecurity to the export testing requirements and now all UK herds wishing to export to the EU MUST undergo a bTB skin test followed by a blood test (Enferplex or IDEXX/DPP) on all breeding aged alpacas on the holding.

The British alpaca industry would like to work with our EU neighbours to share genetics, wealth and improve the alpaca breed. We have a lot to offer each other and with these new tough pre-export bTB testing requirements that the UK government have put in place, matched with the easily traceable port import isolation conditions, we believe that it is safe to once again encourage your members to buy and sell with the UK.

This leaflet has been produced to help spread the word.

English and German language leaflets are available