Mr. Michael Halford:

I welcome the Senator's questions. For the people who do not understand, as trainers we have a duty of care to these horses and their well-being. If we have a horse that is lame, our first thing to do is to get the vet. When we get the vet, he or she comes out and assesses the horse. If the horse needs medication or whatever else, the horse is treated by the vet, not by us. We have a medical register for the vets in our office. They fill in exactly what the horse got, when it got it, the amounts it got and the withdrawal time the drug should take to leave the horse's system so it will be clear to run. I have a board in front of me in the office and all horses that are on any medication are written on the board along with the withdrawal days. We have a list of what the withdrawal days should be. As Mr. Grassick said, it may not be 100% perfect in that sometimes something could stay in a horse's system a little longer. In that case I always give a horse longer than is recommended. That is the way it works. Likewise, any drugs or whatever we may have in the yard or anything we need to treat the horses with is all prescription now. We get prescriptions with the horse's name, the dosage and the number of days on them. They are all kept in a file, so when or if the IHRB decides to carry out an inspection in our yard, it will come to the office. The first thing we do with every horse when we get its passport is we take it out of the food chain. We sign it off to say it is not eligible for the food chain. Then there is a medical record for every horse. As I said, the prescriptions are all kept and the medicine is all kept under lock and key. We have one guy, a qualified chemist from Croatia, who is in charge of the medicines. Every morning he goes to his locker, which is under lock and key, and deals with all the horses, so there is no confusion about whose responsibility it is. There is one guy dedicated to this, and a record of everything is strictly kept in the office. Being trainers, we signed up for this with the IHRB, which has access to our yard 24-7. Its staff can call whenever they wish, look for all this stuff and cross-reference it back to the vets. It is all above board and all there to be seen.