Obviously, since no penalty is involved here in the States, any farrier can claim to have any level of certification from any organization.  Certification is voluntary.  Thus, all of our self-aggrandizing fluff and splitting of testing hairs is purely academic in the real world because any voluntary farrier testing program is useless to the horse-owning public!

Why?

Simple:  the only farriers who will volunteer to be tested are those who think they can pass, the incompetents will stay away in droves.  To be meaningful as a measure of farrier competency, a test would need to be mandated by the state and administered to everyone wishing to practice the trade/profession/whatever.  Licensing, whether mandated at the state or federal level, means some form of competency testing and provision for enforcement.

Most of us will agree that licensing will not insure what is generally accepted as good farriery, any more than a driver's license insures good driving.  On the other hand, assuming the implementation of a valid testing procedure and no nonsensical grandfathering in of possible incompetents, the possession of a license will insure that a farrier has demonstrated the ability to shoe a horse to a reasonable standard.

Licensing will also give the horse-owning public added civil recourse for a farrier's negligence.

A competency test along the lines of the AFA Basic Farrier's Text would be a good model: anyone claiming to be a farrier who is unable to pass the AFA Basic doesn't need a mask and a gun to rob folks.

I used to think the nut fringe of the so-called "humane" organizations had enough clout to get farrier licensing passed, but I don't any more. I don't think the state cares one way or the other if Dobbin gets what he needs, I think the licensing of farriers has become inevitable because of  the necessity of state legislatures to milk every financial cow in sight in order to subsidize a citizenry who finds it more lucrative to be on the dole than to engage in  honest labor.

In my opinion, the choice facing farriers is not, "Will we have licensing?"; rather, the choice has become, "Who will design, implement and administer the program?"

Thus far, we farriers have managed to dodge the bullet of licensing, but many state legislatures are sighting on us and squeezing the trigger. We can either work within the framework of our state and regional professional farrier organizations to set up a farriery licensing program administered by our peers, or, we can continue to argue from the classic viewpoint of a large flightless bird about losing our so-called independence and have the state's bureaucrats determine what's best for us.

Will we implement the regulation of farriery ourselves or do we allow the state to cram it down our collective throats?

Given our self-destructive penchant for intellectual immobility and whining irrationally about losing our independence - while the gristmill of inevitability slowly turns - my money's on the state.