Stuck in quarantine for a month due to what owner Peter Brant called a false positive for the disease Dourine, the 2-year-old filly Belle Gambe (Ire) (Dubawi {Ire}) has been released by the United States Department of Agriculture and will soon be on her way to Payson Park in Florida to join the Chad Brown barn.
The latest development ended a nightmarish period for the well-bred filly that had so disturbed Brant that he said the USDA had “kidnapped” his horse.
Belle Gambe is a Brant homebred who is a half-sister to 2019 champion turf female Uni (GB) (More Than Ready). On Jan. 13, Brant shipped Belle Gambe and three other horses from Ireland to the U.S. with plans to immediately send them to Florida. But Belle Gambe was forced to stay behind by the USDA and sent to a quarantine facility at Churchill Downs because she had tested positive for Dourine.
Dourine, a venereal disease, however, does not exist in Ireland or the U.S. and can only be transmitted through breeding, which Brant argued, meant the test had to be the result of a false positive. Worried about having a young, developing horse stuck in a stall while in quarantine, Brant lobbied the USDA to rely on common sense and release the filly, but says the government officials ignored him.
Given a subsequent test, Belle Gambe again tested positive. But she was tested a third time on Feb. 10 and came up negative. Had she again tested positive, Brant would have had to have either shipped her back to Ireland or have the horse put down.
“Firstly, we would like to thank Sue Brewster, Operations Manager of the Kentucky Import Center at Churchill Downs, Louisville, Kentucky and her team for their good care while the filly was stuck in quarantine, Mersant Horse Transportation and team for their diligent handling of this case, and most of all Belle Gambe for her class and patience during the course of her month-long lockdown due to no fault of her own,” Brant said. “As we were told by the staff at the facility when the filly left QT, 'Belle Gambe is a champion before she even makes it to the races.' We are obviously relieved that the filly has cleared quarantine, however the past few weeks have been stressful and have undoubtedly taken a toll on the filly's physical and mental well-being. Rather than being able to proceed to training during this crucial period of her development, she will now have to spend weeks if not months regaining strength and conditioning lost over the course of the past month since she arrived.
Brant said he researched the issue and found that false positives are a recurring problem when it comes to the USDA and horses shipping to the U.S. from overseas.
“From the research I have done many, many of these false positives exist,” he said. “It's not like they keep finding horses that actually have this Dourine. There are no cases in the countries these horses come from. It only exists in the Middle East and Africa. Obviously, this was a false positive. They are too rigid in their interpretation. And there's no flexibility with the current people that are there. On all these matters, you need to have some flexibility. It's not a good thing to do to these animals.”
He continued, “While we can certainly appreciate that the USDA and APHIS have prescribed regulatory protocols that they must follow, this experience has demonstrated to us and to most observers that those protocols are in desperate need of modification. The current methods are not in line with much of the rest of the world and all too often lead to false positives that jeopardize the welfare of horses and impose significant financial burden on owners. We would strongly encourage the USDA to revisit its existing policies and to permit industry participants to take part an examination of its quarantine protocols and testing methodologies. Ours is an international sport, and our industry must do everything it can to help ensure that equine athletes can safely move between countries without fear of encountering the same quarantine nightmare that we, and many others, have gone through.”
For now, after being unable to train for a month, Belle Gambe
will be behind many of the other 2-year-olds in the Chad Brown stable, but Brant is hopeful she will catch up.
“She's by Dubawi and they are probably more latter year 2-year-old performers rather than early 2-year-old year performers, so that goes in her favor,” Brant said. “Training is important and so is building bone. They also need to get speed work. She's obviously delayed with that. We won't know more until she moves further along in her training process.”
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