A consultation, set to be launched today (Monday, March 30), will set out plans for an ‘arms length' body to take over responsibility for animal health policy from Defra.

Alongside these plans will be details of proposed fund-raising mechanisms to ensure livestock farmers shoulder an increased share of the cost of the animal health budget in future.

It is likely that one of the favoured options will be a livestock keeper registration scheme that would effectively be a headage payment on each animal farmers owned.

Defra said its proposals would ‘help to reduce the risks and costs of animal disease, improve confidence in animal health policies and ensure that livestock keepers who benefit from animal disease control measures share the costs of those measures with taxpayers'.

It said this was the next stage of the wider process of responsibility and cost sharing between Government and industry.