Systemic failures at all levels of the Australian Quarantine Inspection Service and irresponsible behaviour by private horse grooms, veterinarians and farriers have been blamed for last year's devastating outbreak of equine influenza, which cost the horse racing industry $1 billion.
The Callinan inquiry into the outbreak has found that the virus entered Australia through infected horses brought in from Japan and taken to the Eastern Creek Quarantine Station in Sydney.
The report found that it then spread to the general horse population as a result of unidentified grooms, farriers or vets who left Eastern Creek without bothering to shower or decontaminate as required by quarantine rules.
The former High Court judge, Ian Callinan, also found that none of the AQIS officers at the Eastern Creek station was checking whether people leaving the facility were decontaminating themselves.
The report amounts to an indictment of the competence and internal management systems of AQIS and the federal Department of Agriculture because Mr Callinan found that errors and failures at all levels of these agencies contributed to the failure to enforce decontamination requirements at the quarantine station.
"What I describe bespeaks an organisation that lacked clear lines of communication between those responsible for formulating procedures and work instructions and those responsible for implementing them; one in which there was insufficient training and education in relation to the procedures and instructions to be followed; one in which there was no checking to ensure that those procedures and instructions were being implemented; and one in which any business plan or other reporting system did not alert senior management to these failures," the report said.
These included:
* Staff at the regional and national level were not checking whether the rules were being implemented at the quarantine station.
* Staff at Eastern Creek had not been trained about their responsibilities.
* There was just one officer at the station responsible for horses and she was also responsible for dogs and cats and had been told to give priority to the dogs and cats.
* In April 2007 a national manager of AQIS was told the rules for horse quarantine procedures were not being followed but did nothing to fix the problem.
Mr Callinan said ultimate responsibility for the breakdown lay with the secretary of the agriculture department, Conall O'Connell, the executive director of AQIS, Stephen Hunter, and the executive manager of quarantine within AQIS, Jenni Gordon.
Federal Agriculture Minister, Tony Burke, who released the report today said Mr Hunter had offered to stand aside.
He said he had full confidence in Dr O'Connell.
Mr Callinan recommended that an independent inspector-general of horse importation be created with powers to spot-check and audit quarantine procedures.
He also sheets home a share of the responsibility to the horse industry itself because of the lax attitude many of those caring for horses at Eastern Creel displayed towards decontamination procedures when they left the station.
"Their failure to decontaminate themselves and their equipment contributed to the probable means of the virus's escape from Eastern Creek."
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