It's been a busy 12 months for Thoroughbred Breeders Australia (TBA) and Aushorse and we'd like to share with you the Strategy Review of 2022.
It’s important for us to let breeders know where their money is being spent and give everyone a chance to make suggestions on areas to focus on in the coming 12 months.
The past few years have thrown a number of challenges at the industry, such as COVID-19, and 2022 again saw us working on projects that deliver long term value to breeders, while also being agile enough to step in and provide assistance when a crisis hits.
In the latter category, we had events like the major flooding that hit Victorian farms in late October. With much of the state’s breeding areas under water, TBA was involved in trying to provide the right support to help studs and staff get through a most difficult time.
As well as providing immediate assistance to those worst affected, we organised counsellors to visit farms, set up a service to help breeders access government grants and successfully lobbied the state government to provide the vaccine for Japanese Enchephalitis to all workers in breeding.
The issue of mental health in the workforce is something we made a priority well before the floods, launching our Stud Staff Support Line in late 2021. This service allows all staff in the industry access to free sessions with a qualified psychologist, as well as having a counselling hotline available 24/7.
The past 12 months has seen TBA manage a research project into late term abortions in mares, with breeders in the Hunter Valley, southern Queensland and northern Victoria getting access to free post-mortems on aborted foetuses. In terms of emerging threats, TBA has also commissioned research to guide the breeding industry’s response to a potential Foot and Mouth Disease outbreak.
In the education space we are continuing on with Fast Track, but have also developed an online learning platform that will soon allow us to educate staff right the way across the country, as well as running workshops for managers to improve their leadership.
In the welfare space TBA has had success lobbying governments to introduce reforms based on the recommendations of the Thoroughbred Aftercare Welfare Working Group report that was released at the end of 2021. It is, however, disappointing to report that racing administrators have failed to implement many of the report’s recommendations that are in their remit. A significant reason for this is the continued failure of Racing Australia to bring any leadership to this issue.
Aushorse continues to bang the drum for the Australian industry – an especially important role post COVID – and international spending continues to grow. We also have a keen focus on domestic buyers, highlighting the benefits of locally bred horses, as well as an important role to introduce more people to ownership.
Please reach out to me to discuss these or any other matters of concern at tom@tbaus.com.
