On the day that the thoroughbred industry was holding a vaccination summit in Sydney on the question of annual vaccination of the racing and breeding population for equine influenza, comes the news that all 74 horses at the Sydney Eastern Creek quarantine station are being retested for equine influenza (EI) after one horse returned a positive result.

Federal Agriculture Minister Tony Burke reported the news saying that while the horse in question at the Eastern Creek Quarantine Facility had returned a negative result after the same sample was retested, all the horses at the centre would be retested.

The results of all of the horses will be known in the next few days and all would remain in quarantine until there is an all-clear.

“Right at this point, I’m not at the stage of being able to say it’s time to relax because the second result came back as a negative,” Mr Burke told reporters in Canberra.

“We know how devastating it (EI) was a year ago.

“The billion-dollar figure is often quoted, the truth is we’ll never know the full cost of that outbreak.”

NSW Primary Industries Minister Ian Macdonald said there was serious concern the devastating disease was returning to Australia.

“To be quite honest, I was very worried because a national standstill, particularly at this time of the year, if it had got out of Eastern Creek, would be devastating,”said Macdonald.

Macdonald recommended voluntary vaccinations of all horses in NSW in a speech to the Sydney summit.

There is no threat to the current racing population at the moment as they are still immunised after their EI vaccinations after the 2007 EI shut-down of racing. However, unless they are re-vaccinated for EI they will loose that immunisation at the end of the year.
(Source: Thoroughbred News)