Quarantine - the main issue here.

I was speaking to the poor guy at the DPI's site at the Australian National Field days at Orange yesterday. I posed the question to him - Hypothetically speaking, if (& that's a BIG if) we do manage to eradicate this EI this time, what measures will be put in place to ensure this doesn't happen again, this time next year, & you can be sure horse owners WON'T be so compliant a second time. He said that he didn't know. He had his own views which made perfect sense, but then we all know that governments have very little concept of "perfect sense". We both agreed that having the quarantine station in a high horse density area, is just stupid and asking for trouble......& we are now feeling the long lasting effects of this.

The only way we can guarantee that we aren't in this situation again is to have "our" quarantine facilities weeks off shore. Horses need to remain there for no less than 6 weeks and have at least 2 clear tests to all known exotic diseases they carry Then, when they are declared "clean" they will be free to fly on into Australia. The racing industry gives the government more than enough revenue to fund a centre such as this, and money much better spent, than wasting it on the crap election campaign ads we're subjected to on the television at the moment. Two weeks quarantine is just a slap in the face to every Australian citizen. We were lucky that this virus isn't zoonotic, but the next one could be, and where would that leave us.God help us if "bird flu" should ever be priviledged to spend time at AQIS.

Sue