NSW: Trainer slams NSW's EI protocols

AAP General News (Australia)
12-04-2007
NSW: Trainer slams NSW's EI protocols

SYDNEY, Dec 4 AAP - Claims by a NSW trainer that the state's equine influenza (EI)
protocols are inconsistent and a laughing stock are unfounded, Primary Industries Minister
Ian Macdonald says.

Provincial trainer Brett Cavanough has blasted NSW horse flu measures, saying the EI
management differences between various regional courses have left him dumbfounded.

Mr Cavanough told News Ltd newspapers he had gone to three race meeting in four days
- Wagga Wagga, Canberra and Albury - and witnessed breaches to state-wide protocols at
some racecourses.

At one course, punters were given access to an exclusion zone, Mr Cavanough said.

"There was no foot bath or hand wash - they were just walking through the horse area
to the public enclosure," he said.

But a list of protocols sent to trainers for this weekend's meeting at Rosehill in
Sydney was too demanding, he said.

"You've got to have a three-minute shower ... shower on the way in, shower on the way
out," he said.

"It's just unbelievable some of the crap they're going on with."

Such inconsistencies made NSW racing "the laughing stock of the world", Mr Cavanough said.

But Mr Macdonald dismissed the claims, saying the disease, which brought the state's
racing industry to its knees, would be eradicated by the end of January.

"We're down now to only 27 per cent of the state being actually infected - I think
the program for the three months that it has been going has been remarkably successful
in stabilising what is a critical situation facing a very contagious disease," he said.

"Over the next two months I believe we'll have basically eradicated the presence of
EI in this state."

Mr Macdonald said different approaches to tackling and containing the disease were
being introduced at the different courses around the state, in an effort to tailor them
to local conditions.

"What occurs at race tracks is modelled on what are the conditions at that racetrack,
so a lot of tracks have different stabling conditions, different yarding situations and
they have different levels of both staff and resources," he said.

"I believe and have every confidence that the situation at race tracks will not lead
to the spread of equine influenza."

AAP TURF ab/hn/imc/jlw

KEYWORD: STALLIONS MACDONALD

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