Shadow Agriculture Minister Deb Frecklington has called on the State Government to urgently convene a series of high-level meetings to resolve a “crisis” about Hendra horse vaccinations in Queensland.
Mrs Frecklington said prosecutions of three veterinary surgeons by Workplace Health and Safety for treating unvaccinated horses meant equine vets effectively now had their hands tied.
“Sick, unvaccinated horses can no longer be treated until exclusion tests are done,” she said.
“Horses are suffering because treatments are being delayed while vets are being forced to work with significantly increased risk to their personal safety or else treat vaccinated horses because they now fear prosecution under the Worksafe Act.
“Horses are facing unprecedented welfare issues, and horse owners are blaming vets in this impasse, being fuelled by an ill-informed anti-vaccine social media campaign.”
Claims have been made on social media that vets were “colluding” with a multi-national chemical company to force owners to get the vaccinations.
But vets were actually refusing to treat unvaccinated horses because they feared fines of up to $600,000 and five years’ jail.
“It’s a terrible mess which is damaging Queensland’s valuable equine industry and the government needs to show leadership,” Mrs Frecklington said.
She called on the Agriculture, Health and Racing Ministers to convene an urgent stakeholders’ meeting in Brisbane, followed by meetings in key regional centres including Toowoomba, Nambour, Bundaberg, Rockhampton, Mackay, Townsville and Cairns.
“The problem is, no vet can say for certain if any sick horse is infected with Hendra without an exclusion test being carried out and tests can take days for the results to come back,” Mrs Frecklington said.
“In the meantime, if the horse hasn’t been vaccinated, vets are forced to assume it is infected and Biosecurity Queensland guidelines make invasive treatment impossible.”
Mrs Frecklington said there was a very strong case for the government to step in and put a stay on the prosecutions proceeding until the impasse had been sorted out.
“Common sense needs to prevail to allow vets to do their job properly without fear of unfair prosecution,” she said.
“This stand-off is a major animal welfare issue with some unvaccinated horses having to wait days for proper treatment and obviously in the overwhelming majority of cases these are horses that do not have Hendra.”
This is the second time Mrs Frecklington has urged the State Government to act on the issue.
In December, she asked Industrial Relations Minister Curtis Pitt to intervene, saying prosecutions under Workplace Health & Safety laws had led to confusion among both horse owners and vets.
At the time, then-Agriculture Minister Bill Byrne said the State Government did not have the regulatory power to force vets to attend to ill horses; and the government also had no mandate that the vaccine must be administered to horses.
“There is no easy answer to this,” he said.
