Impact of Equine Influenza on Non-racing Horse Community in Australia

Impact of Equine Influenza on Non-racing Horse Community in Australia.
As part of the non-racing horse community we have no UNITED front to make the Federal and State politicians understand our plight. At this stage there is little understanding being shown of the hardship currently being experienced by many individuals and families faced with going to the wall due to the EI crisis. There are trainers, transporters, instructors, farriers, dentists, vets, saddlery and feed suppliers all struggling with the shut down of their income. The trouble we face is that the racing industry has a good database with numbers of horses and trainers, this makes it easy to show figures on numbers affected. As the sporting/leisure horse industry we do not have a united front with databases showing the numbers of horses we have and people involved. This makes it difficult to get the politicians to understand the extent of the devastating effect Equine Influenza is having of the non-racing horse community.