Equine influenza inquiry report

Summary In August 2007 there was an intake of 52 horses into the Eastern Creek Quarantine Station in New South Wales and 27 horses into the Spotswood Quarantine Station in Victoria. Thirteen of the horses were from Japan. They arrived at Tullamarine Airport in Melbourne on 8 August. Nine of them were received into Spotswood; the remaining four were taken to Sydney (Kingsford Smith) Airport and from there were transported to Eastern Creek. Subsequent analyses of blood samples taken from the horses at Eastern Creek and Spotswood established that one of the four Japanese horses at Eastern Creek and seven of the Japanese horses at Spotswood had become infected with equine influenza at some stage before 13 August, when blood samples were first taken while they were in post-arrival quarantine. Analyses of the blood samples of the other horses at Eastern Creek—from Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States—did not establish that any of them were infected with the virus on arrival in quarantine. On 17 August one of the horses at Eastern Creek, the Irish stallion Encosta De Lago, was observed to have some symptoms consistent with equine influenza. On 20 August another Irish stallion, in the stall next to Encosta De Lago, was observed to have similar symptoms. Nasal swabs and blood samples were then taken from a number of the Eastern Creek horses; analyses of the swabs and samples revealed that five of the horses were infected with the virus. Subsequent analysis has established that the virus (described as Eastern Creek/07) is identical to the virus that infected horses in Centennial Parklands Equestrian Centre (Sydney/07) (see the next section). It is an H3N8 sub-type of the equine influenza virus and is almost identical to the virus responsible for an outbreak in Japan in August 2007 (Ibaraki/07) and a virus isolated in Pennsylvania in the United States in late August 2007 (Pennsylvania/07). The best explanation for the simultaneous presence of infected horses at Eastern Creek and Spotswood Quarantine Stations is that there was a common source of infection and that it came with the horses from Japan rather than the United States. That conclusion is consistent not only with the analyses of blood samples taken from the horses but also with the fact that the horses from Japan underwent pre-export quarantine on the island of Hokkaido between 17 July and 6 August, where subsequently there were several notifications of outbreaks of equine influenza, among them outbreaks at places where three of the stallions and six of the mares had undergone pre-export quarantine. It is for these reasons that I concluded that one of the four horses from Japan received into Eastern Creek on 8 August, the stallion Snitzel, was likely to have been infected with equine influenza on arrival there and that one or more of the other horses from Japan that arrived in Sydney with Snitzel might also have been contaminated with the virus but not infected by it. I also concluded that some of the horses from Japan received into Spotswood on 8 August were infected with the virus