EI class action against quarantine station

The Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service is likely to be hit with a multi-million dollar damages claim over the equine influenza (EI) outbreak.

More than 300 Australian horse owners have registered with Queensland law firm Atwood Marshall, outlining their intention to join a class action to recoup their losses.
An independent inquiry into the outbreak heard that problems at Sydney's Eastern Creek Quarantine Station were to blame.
Lawyer Jeff Garrett says the outbreak cost the industry at least $1 billion.
"Many people, their businesses simply ground to a halt , they just had nothing," he said.
"If the findings come in with what we heard at the inquiry itself I think there's little doubt that the relevant government authority is going to be held squarely responsible for the outbreak."
New South Wales Primary Industries Minister Ian Macdonald has publicly attacked the quarantine service, saying it is solely to blame for last year's horse flu outbreak.
"It'll show that Eastern Creek was slack, as many of my veterinary officers and others associated with the department have said right from the beginning," he said.
"This is straight out of Eastern Creek or pre-Eastern Creek and is a great demonstration of what should not happen in relation to quarantine services."
He says he believes the inquiry will prove that sub-standard quarantine protocols were to blame.
"It could have been a lot worse if we had an exotic disease enter this country that had some human potentiality or could spread to humans such as, they believe, avian influenza could," he said. Click here to go to the Story

"We need to have very strong bio-security protocols in place at all of our entry points."