The scientist who’ll overturn global ban on SA horse exports

Ahead of the Vodacom Durban July this weekend, one of South Africa's favourite horse-racing events, the South African horse breeding industry is in the spotlight. South Africa is known to breed high quality horses, at low prices, but is internationally impeded by the reality of African Horse Sickness. An industry that could be worth R1bn is worth R250m today because of an aversion toward purchasing South African horses that carry the risk of spreading the disease internationally. It is argued that the disease is not the only thing holding international South African horse sales back, some say that politics have a very big role to play and that the international community simply doesn't want cheap South African horses competing in a high-price market. Ian Sanne, the Director of the Equine Research Fund at the Wits Health Consortium has some profound insights into how the industry can hurdle the obstacles, and exactly what it expects to result from its efforts toward addressing the scourge of African Horse Sickness. Ian believes that the international market is very keen to buy our horses and based on his feedback, it certainly seems that there is good news on the horizon for the horse industry in South Africa. – LF

ALEC HOGG: Well, there's significant international interest in South African horses, but investment falls way short of potential. It could be somewhere around R1bn, maybe even more, compared with the R250m that horse owners plough into the industry every year. Ask me – been there, done that. Ian Sanne is Director of the Equine Research Fund at the Wits Health Consortium. He's with us in the studio to maybe help us understand something that people in the horse investment game have been grappling with for years. There's a thing called African Horse Sickness and that's stopping this industry from taking its rightful place in the rest of the world. How close are you to – well, you can't fix African Horse Sickness – but at least, finding a way of overcoming this obstacle?

IAN SANNE: Firstly, thank you for the invitation. I think that the Equine Health Fund under this Health Consortium has just been launched. It's really taken over the role of multiple industry players in trying to fund the research and development towards a strategy for enhancing export. The main obstruction to export is a disease called African Horse Sickness. It's been around for many centuries. There were wars won and lost, based on the horse that died from African Horse Sickness and today, we still have an annual outbreak of African Horse Sickness in our country. It is what we call an Arbovirus. It causes a very sick horse. Unfortunately, in unvaccinated horses, 90 percent die and the rest of the world don't really want to import this vector-borne – it's transmitted by a midge – virus into their country.

What we are trying to do is establish the research and development that will lead to better diagnosis with more modern technologies and a new vaccine. In a very similar way that an HIV vaccine is being developed using the same constructs, as well as ongoing surveillance throughout the country so that we know the disease incidents and prevalence – how often it occurs. In addition, the big shift has been in our recent strategic document that was released after a workshop with government, is that government has really indicated significant support for this potential growth industry. We were up at about 100,000 employees in the breeding and racing industry. It has declined over time, to round about 15,000 people employed. There's a huge growth potential and we have not only sports horses, but also racehorses that actually perform internationally. Variety Club recently won the Hong Kong cup.

ALEC HOGG: Second-best miler in the world, I'll have you know, in South Africa.

IAN SANNE: And Jade Hook with her horse, New Era – a South African horse – came third in the Hickstead Derby.

ALEC HOGG: So our horses can compete but Ian, we can talk about the basics forever, but its politics. If I'm sitting outside of South Africa, why do I want to have a cheap product come into my market? The products from here are good. They've proven that. They're as good as anything in the world is. Why are they going to change their minds? They have a lovely excuse now with African Horse Sickness. They don't have to let this cheap product come into the equine markets of the world. How are you going to change that?

IAN SANNE: We've heard this argument and we've actually challenged the various breeder authorities around the world. There's no such animosity against South Africa. In fact, it's not the breeder who buys our horse – it's the racehorse owner that buys our horse. We have lots of interest from as far afield as Singapore, Hong Kong, in Dubai, and in Europe for our horses. The United States would also like to open up to our horses, both the endurance (sports horses) as well as racehorses. I believe that if we got our own internal politics actually, in South Africa right and we move together on a uniform strategy towards securing export from a free zone with a lockdown quarantine facility, we would actually be able to enhance our export. I want to mention one more thing before you ask your next question. South Africa wishes to host the 2024 Olympics and for that Olympic bid to succeed, we actually have to also be able to bring the equestrian sport to South Africa. We therefore need to bring the top international horses into the country. If we don't solve African Horse Sickness, either that sport would be excluded from our bid, making our bid weak or in fact, we would need to be able to passage horses in and out.

GUGULETHU MFUPHI:  Alec knows a lot more about horses than what I do. He bred them for some time, but from what I understand the internal politics, which you mentioned are key issues as well as the African Horse Sickness… Coming back to the political issues here, what are the key fundamentals that have gone wrong?

IAN SANNE: I'm a Professor of Medicine, so when I came to understand exactly what was going on, there was significant discourse amongst the industry as to how the approach should be undertaken to do this. I think we are trying to coalesce everybody's opinions into a single direction, and that direction does need to be government-led. Government was sitting on the sidelines – if I could describe it as that – and now, trade with our trade partners really needs to be led, government to government. We're hoping that indeed, we will bring not only the industry role players from the listed shareholder Phumelela, through to the different trusts etcetera in the industry. We'd like to bring the individual donors to the table to complete a vaccine development and this diagnostic strategy.

The amount of money that has been invested in African Horse Sickness vaccine is tiny compared to the amount of money that has been invested internationally, in HIV or Tuberculosis and yet, they actually have had some significant successes. We have three candidate vaccines that need to be moved forward. We'd really like to bring enough funding into play to actually make this development complete.

ALEC HOGG: Let me get this right. I breed horses. I bred horses full-time for a period of time. At the beginning of last year, the TBA (Thoroughbred Breeders Association) said by July last year, African Horse Sickness bans would be out of the way. They have a vaccine. They have the quarantine stations. They have everything in place. The feedback we get, as breeders, as people who have invested hugely in this industry, is that international politics and the EU have just kicked it into touch. Every time there's been progress – even talk to an international trainer like Mike de Kock – he will tell you that it's all politics. It has nothing to do with the reality, but you're saying that you can turn this around on its head. You can turn it by bringing all the parties together.

You are aware that President Zuma visited Dubai two years ago, asked the Sheikh if he could reassess this and the Sheikh said 'yes, of course I will, President Zuma' and of course, nothing's happened subsequently. There are many people who've invested lots of money in this industry and I'm sure they'd love to know from you, and get some confidence from you that they can invest more.

IAN SANNE: I think that you've asked a number of questions, but the first part of it is that these trade partners have demonstrated an interest in working with us. The European Union Commission on Agriculture to South Africa, actually brought up the question of African Horse Sickness and the export of horses, and they are seeking for solutions to enact/facilitate the EU importation of horses from South Africa. However, the second point is that we actually need to complete the surveillance. We need to know what our disease is doing in South Africa and we need to lobby and come together, preferably around a single export zone so that we can harness all the data we have, and focus down on a single export zone, and probably a lockdown facility. The diagnostic test is moving internationally through the processes of approval and the OIE, which is the WHO equivalent in animal diseases in fact, running a program to evaluate the diagnostic test developed by the University of Pretoria.

We have surveillance, diagnostics, and development of vaccine. I would put my head on the block that in 2015, we have a 50 percent chance of opening up export to at least one significant trade partner. When the first comes in line, the others will follow and by 2016, I believe the development will be complete and we'll have almost 100 percent chance and that's speaking as a scientist. I understand the science of this extremely well. I understand trade modestly, but I certainly understand science.

ALEC HOGG: And politics I'm afraid, Ian… I hope you're right. As they say in the racing game 'from your lips to God's ears'.

IAN SANNE: Thanks very much.

ALEC HOGG: 2016. As you say, it could be a massive change for the racing industry in South Africa – for the thoroughbred industry in South Africa – for the horse industry from this country. We make very good horses here. We grow them well. We grow them cheap and they compete with anything in the world. The problem is we haven't been able to get through. Maybe Ian Sanne is the man who's going to make that happen. He's the Director of the Equine Research Fund at the Wits Health Consortium.