An outbreak of African horse sickness has brought South Africa’s horse exports to a grinding halt, costing breeders millions.
The Kenilworth quarantine station in the Western Cape is the only African location from which horses can be exported overseas. But now that the disease has spread to nearby areas, exports have been suspended.
More than 1 000 horses are reported to have died since the epidemic began in February, said Douglas Welsh, chairperson of the African Horse Sickness Trust. But Welsh said he believed these represent a fraction of the actual death toll.
The horse sickness virus is endemic to Africa and the European Union put protocols in place in 1997 to ensure that it did not spread further afield. The station is located in a “free zone” and horses outside this and the associated surveillance and protected zones must be vaccinated. The disease can be transmitted when horses are transported illegally into these zones.
“A multibillion-rand industry is at the mercy of two traffic cops,” said Bennie van der Merwe, president of the South Africa Equine Veterinary Association.
Peter Gibson, the chief executive of Racing South Africa, said that the outbreak was the sixth since 1960. Since the EU protocol was put in place most bouts have been followed by a two-year export embargo. The World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) also requires the suspension of South Africa’s horse-sickness-free status for 12 months after an outbreak.
A movement ban has been imposed on all horses in the Malmesbury quarantine area and horses have been vaccinated. Van der Merwe, who has been breeding thoroughbreds for more than 12 years, said that last week’s national yearling sale in Johannesburg was one of the worst in years.
“Our horses are some of the best in the world, but people won’t buy them because they can’t take them out,” he said.
The earnings of stud farms have declined by up to 40%, with a knock-on effect on the racing industry, he said. He estimated his breeding operation would lose about R6-million this year.
Alan Guthrie, director of the Equine Research Centre at the Onderstepoort Veterinary Institute, said that of the 300 000 horses in South Africa, 75 000 were in one of the worst-hit areas, the Eastern Cape, where they were used mainly for transport. The recent death of several hundred horses in the province “has a major impact on their [the population’s] existence”, he said, pointing out that “we have lost some irreplaceable genetic material”.
Van der Merwe said an aggravating factor had been the location of the outbreak in the poor community of Mamre, 60km from Kenilworth. Because of the poverty in the area it had been particularly difficult to stop. A solution to the problem of moving horses abroad is for the animals to be rerouted via Mauritius, where they undergo a costly and time-consuming 90-day clearance before entering Europe. The only other option, Gibson said, was to negotiate with the EU and the OIE.
African horse sickness, characterised by respiratory and circulatory damage accompanied by fever and loss of appetite, has a fatality rate of about 90%. It is spread by a blood-sucking midge.