A new law brought into force on the 11th of March 2011, is detailed in this LINK

It seems to have come about as a result of a case brought by the Farriers association against barefoot trimmers.

Basically it lists and clarifies who, legally, (who isn’t a vet) can perform procedures on animals. Only in the case of first aid or contagious disease can anyone not qualified legitimately do anything to an animal.

Medical/surgical interventions can only be carried out by
1. Blacksmiths
2.Vet students
3.Inspectors of the Veterinary Public Health dept
4. Appropriately qualified/authorised civil servants
5.Lab managers – to do diagnostic tests
6.Technicians (for birds and pigs) supervised by a vet, if doing mass immunisation, castration, beak trimming…
7.Technicians and vet employees (appropriately qualified, specific zoological conditions)
8.Appropriately qualified and registered people doing artificial insemination
9.Civil servants and agents mentioned in article XXX acting within the limits of that article.

On the farriers’ website (UMF), this is what is said;

Faisant suite à une activité judiciaire conséquente à l’encontre des pseudo-pareurs et des démarches politico-interprofessionnelles réalisées par les membres de l’UFM ; le Législateur a spécifié par un nouvel article du Code Rural l’étendue des prestations du maréchal-ferrant.

Donc, de fait, toute activité de parage (qu’il soit naturel, physiologique ou holistique…) ne peut-être réalisée que par des maréchaux-ferrants, ceux-ci devant être inscrit au registre des métiers. Les personnes qui n’offrent pas ces garanties et qui s’essayent au détriment des équidés de réaliser le travail d’un professionnel du bien-être des équidés commettent un exercice illégal de la médecine vétérinaire et s’exposent à une peine de 2 ans d’emprisonnement et 30 000 € d’amendes.

Essentially, with this amendment to the law, any foot trimming activity – natural, physiological or holistic can only be carried out by a proper farrier, registered with the “metiers” to level 5. Anyone who doesn’t offer this guarantee is carrying out an illegal act of veterinary medicine and can be punished with 2 years in prison and a 30,000 € fine.

This has many implications, not least of which that the current crop of barefoot farriers with no MF training, will now be acting illegally and can be proscuted.

The good side of this is that now anyone who damages a horse’s feet by incompetent trimming can now be held to account. That includes farriers via their normal code of conduct, but for the first time the unregistered and inexperienced barefoot trimmers can and will be prosecutable even though they are not registered.

Whilst this is a clumsy and wide change to the law, which will unfortunately also affect those who do trimming well, it is a necessary step to bring into line the unregistered charlatans.