Dreadful news, especially as you do not in any way expect it, and cannot take any protection.
At the moment we are experiencing an outbreak of Equine Flu in Australia. Usually a mild disease, though can be deadly, only affecting horses,and so far not in Victoria, the state where the big Spring Racing Carnival is to be held over the next 6 weeks. The outbreak seems to have been caused by the relaxing of the incredibly strict quarantine regulations that we have in Australia and some horses imported for races in NSW from Japan had the active disease. We are now vaccinating for it, and the feeling is it will be endemic in Australia in the future and we will have it for keeps. The speed with which it has spread has been frightening. There are huge difficulties keeping quarantine in place, and human error certainly seems to have caused some of this spread.
We do not have many of these exotic animal diseases here, but globalisation and free trade put huge pressure on the govt to relax rules. (ie Fireblight infected apples from NZ-terry!)
