Equine Influenza

I'm writing about (like so many others) about the disregard for the horses and people who are not involved in the racing industry, and the respective DPI's management of this whole crisis. First the lack of action taken when authorities were already aware that EI had made it on to our front doorstep. Then we were told that vaccination would make it impossible to eradicate the virus. Then we had the ludicrous situation where racing was still allowed to take place as if a racehorse was an entirely different species, using even weaker bio-security measures than those that had failed to contain it to Eastern Creek quarantine station or Morgan Park, and it was going to be enough to stop the spread - well we know the result of that now!

Then after a concerted campaign to tell us how vaccination was never on the agenda - all of a sudden we were told it was, always had been, and ring vaccination was the next plan to stop the spread outwards. Then those precious (and ludicrously inadequate in quantity) vaccines were hi-jacked and racehorses were vaccinated, racehorses that were in pockets or properties which were in the middle of EI hotspots, or surrounded by thousand of perfectly healthy horses. We are now told, tough luck, those thousands of horses, also worth millions of dollars, both in financial and emotional currency, are earmarked to get this disease and hopefully those fully vaccinated racehorses can get back to racing in 8 weeks and happily spread it around the so the rest of the horse world can suffer. And under no circumstances are we to be allowed access to the vaccine.

Many of us would happily import the vaccine and pay for it ourselves to protect our much loved and precious horses, but we will be prosecuted if we do. And our wonderful border security would pick up and destroy any vaccine being imported, it's just a pity that those same authorities relaxed the quarantine laws for thoroughbreds so much that they managed to bring it into the country. In the meantime our Industry is being decimated, and we are being directed by the beauracratic equivalent of the Keyston Cops. The average 8yr old with that precious pony that has become the medias' view of the rest of the horse world, would have had a better understanding of our industry and much better management skills. I have been passionately involved in horses since I was 4yrs old, I have spent 30yrs breeding horses, building up a small but successful stud. I am not eligible for any compensation, and I don't particularly want any, there are much more deserving cases out there that will lose businesses, homes, and they will be lost to the horse industry forever.

What I want is the right to protect my horses from a disease which was allowed in by the very idiots who are now denying me access to vaccines. It won't stop my horses getting it, but it does turn a potential disaster into a sniffle. The vaccines are out there, there is a stockpile in the USA and South Africa, and like all vaccines they have a use by date. It's true that no horse, just like no human, dies of Influenza. They die or are permanently damaged by the secondary infections and complications. The flow on effects when a huge industry like ours which puts so much into the community in both economic and social areas will be massive and horse racing is such a very small portion of it.

I am just an average person getting much less than the average wage. I was that little girl who loved her pony! I dreamed of breeding horses and my dream came true - with the inevitable joys, tragedies and heartaches that brings. But I never believed that a Government or a Govt Dept. could be so inept as to deliberately put my precious horses in harms way when there always was an alternative. We need more vaccines and they need to be made available to everybody in the Red Zone who wants them. Governments and their departments need to realise, that while we don't have a collective voice, we do all have a vote!

Debbie Dekker