Thoroughbred Breeders Association Chairman Lee Scribante has expressed his disappointment and anger with the ‘discourteous attitude’ of the European Union, saying the days of South Africa acting with courtesy and treading wearily in the face of plain bad manners should be cast behind us.
Speaking to the Sporting Post on Monday, the straightshooting veteran said that it was time for ‘us to bare our teeth’.
Lee Scribante – ‘this is the 21st century’
“Fair enough. We had an inspection date and Covid-19 threw a spanner in the works. But then things eased. There was an option of a virtual audit. The soft diplomacy is clearly having no impact on the EU. They have not even bothered to answer our emails. They are holding us hostage for the sake of a political issue about chicken.”
Scribante, who is Chairman of surely the singularly most well managed entity on the South African horseracing and breeding landscape, said that industry affiliates had come to the party and kept the lobby going for years.
He said that the absence of government was also questionable and that there was lots at stake beyond simply horseracing and breeding.
“The industry is a big employer. Somebody really needs to see the bigger picture. This is the 21st century. I am not impressed by the way the EU have tossed us out like a leaf in the wind,” he added.
South Africa can’t export horses directly to the European Union, due to an outbreak of African Horse Sickness in 2011.
The World Health Organisation set up protocols on moving animals around the world and we have been stuck in limbo ever since.
Although South Africa has been disease-free for some time now and an audit was scheduled in April to free up exports from the local industry, the Covid-19 lockdown threw a spanner in the works and it has been postponed indefinitely.
The Daily Maverick reported recently that, Coronavirus aside, the delay is mostly due to other ‘trade irritants’, as Peter Fabricius referred to in his report on the first ministerial conference between SA and the EU in four years, in July.
Adrian Todd, managing director of SA Equine Health and Protocols, told Daily Maverick THAT South Africa has been willing and able to export horses since the end of 2018. We have been left with only one option: to send horses offshore via Mauritius. There is an agreement in place that allows us to do that.
They can’t go anywhere else directly. They can’t go from Mauritius to Dubai or from Mauritius to Australia – they have to go to Europe and then from Europe to the relevant places.
It adds great cost and time delays to the local breeders’ and trainers’ supply chain. They are bound to a 21-day pre-export isolation in SA, then have to fly their horses to Mauritius where they have to remain for 90 days, 40 of which are in pre-export quarantine.
SAEHP boss – Adrian Todd
Todd says South Africa’s current inability to trade with the EU has resulted in an inability to trade directly with other key markets such as Dubai. It has even placed a damper on future prospects.
For example, Hong Kong has indicated that as soon as our export routes to the EU are open, it will conduct its own inspection with a view to lifting the current suspension.
SA supports more than 177,000 jobs in the local horse racing space, but it has been shedding jobs at warp speed over the past three years.
“If our breeders can’t sell their stock in hard currency, they can’t grow the local industry organically,” Todd says.
Veteran Mike de Kock told Daily Maverick that local stockholders are taking extreme strain. He was training over 100 racehorses for owners in Dubai not too long ago, and it has dwindled to 40.
Projections indicate that more than 600 horses, including racehorses mainly for breeding purposes, warmbloods and endurance horses, can be exported to the Middle East annually.
Endurance horse racing is a niche equestrian sport that is rapidly growing in popularity there, and Dubai is South Africa’s biggest trade depot in the area.
The Department of Trade, Industry and Competition has been pushing hard for the issue to be resolved, but the EU has held the process to ransom due to trade issues such as poultry exports.
Racing and breeding has been the collateral damage.
- Daily Maverick / Additional reporting by SP Editorial staff
