Breeding & Racing Magazine

Frappell Blasts EI Fallacies 3

Queensland Breeders Association president Bob Frappell summed up his criticisms: "Comments published by vested interests, citing expert vets or authorities & not naming these so-called experts, are scurrilous & should be ignored. Some of the equine industry got EI through no fault of their own. We as an industry should be trying to protect those people. We should be sympathetic they got it, so we did not have to. All that happened to them was that vaccination got here 6 weeks too late. The facts are that the authorities require a naive population of horses in the Red Zone to act as sentinels, in order to prove the disease has been eradicated. Those people should not be discriminated against. It is just as important that those that contracted EI in the early stages of the epidemic be protected from discrimination as well. If those that did not contract EI consider themselves special or privileged, then they are sadly mistaken. I would call them lucky. I call on the purveyors of the opinions that horses that contracted EI are permanently damaged to put forward the scientific evidence to support their opinion. If they can't put up the evidence, then I can't help thinking it does not exist. If evidence does not exist to support the theory, then it must be false."