Casinos.co.uk: Casino News Archive
Thursday 6th September 2007
Horses back out of bed after flu
Horses in New South Wales will be back on the race track this weekend for the first time after two weeks in quarantine due to a horse flu scare.
The National Consultative Committee on Emergency Animal Diseases has said that the first race meeting will take place at Sydney's Warwick Farm, although as a precaution, members of the public will not be allowed to attend.
State Primary Industries Minister, Ian Macdonald, said that if the experimental race is a success, more applications for race meetings could then be considered.
Chief executive of Racing New South Wales, Peter V'Landys, said that organisers of the races would have to be careful.
"This disease is unfortunately very virulent," he said. "If somebody doesn't obey the protocols that we put in [and] has contact with horses with the disease, they can pass it on. But we have put such an array of measures in that there will be very minimal risk involved."
He added: "In actual fact, we're going to make a loss out of the race meeting but it's just to boost the morale of our participants. We've got 40,000 or 50,000 people that earn a living directly or indirectly through the racing industry and this is more of a morale booster to give them that we are trying to put race meetings on."
After the two weeks break for the racing industry, the New South Wales government has set up a $525,000 fund to promote horse racing, although it refuses to provide a relief fund.
Source:Direct News
| Discuss this story in the Gambling.co.uk Forums. Last five forum Posts: |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
