Dr Regina Fogarty Director Office of Agricultural Sustainability & Food Security 161 Kite Street Orange NSW 2800 Sent also to:
[email protected] Dear Dr Fogarty 15 November 2013 EQUINE CRITICAL INDUSTRY CLUSTER MAPPING VERIFICATION The Hunter Thoroughbred Breeders Association welcomes the opportunity to comment on the equine critical industry cluster verification process. We appreciate the one week extension provided by the Minister’s office to respond to the current draft maps. As you would appreciate conducting an exercise of this nature, at one of the busiest times in the industry’s breeding and racing calendar, has been challenging. This submission from the HTBA includes: 1. a list of properties (including Lot and DP numbers) of our stud farms and related equine operations. This is a subset of the information provided in our earlier submission and includes omissions made to either parts or entire key thoroughbred breeding, husbandry, sales or fodder properties the details of which were provided in our previous submissions); 2. critical industry cluster verification forms and accompanying statutory declarations (where appropriate); 3. a copy of our earlier submission which should be considered in conjunction with this submission. This is to ensure the compete inclusion of properties to be included in the equine critical industry cluster mapping; and 4. comments on matters we raised in our previous submission that have not been addressed. As we noted in our recent meeting, this is the third critical industry cluster mapping process that we have been involved in, in the past two years. We are particularly concerned that property details relating to some of our leading stud farms have not been fully or accurately captured in this mapping exercise while others have been left out entirely.