By ANNE BESTON
A sick horse has been shifted from where the aerial insecticide blitz against the painted apple moth is being waged but officials won't say if any people have been relocated.
About 3000 residential and business properties are within the 560ha spray zone in West Auckland where insecticide Foray
48B, or Btk, is being sprayed by helicopter.
The owner of China the horse, Paula Williamson, said the Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry (Maf) had paid for a specialist veterinarian to examine the animal and agreed to meet the cost of shifting it.
Maf had told her to keep the 12-year-old Arab thoroughbred-cross outside the spray zone for six months.
She said she was not against the aerial spray operation and initially didn't link it to the lumps on China's body or the horse's swollen legs.
"I just thought she had a sore leg but the vet said he hadn't seen anything like it before."
Mrs Williamson, a 39-year-old dental assistant who lives in Henderson, said China was "pretty miserable" within two days of the first helicopter spray in January.
China was in a paddock at Hepburn Rd Riding Club in the heart of the target zone for Maf's $11 million eradication campaign.
She did not have a cover on when the other horses at the club did.
Some of the lumps under the horse's skin were bigger than a fist and all four of her legs were swollen.
The veterinarian suggested the horse might have developed a sudden allergy to something in her paddock.
"She's been in that paddock all her life and she's never been sick for even a day," Mrs Williamson said.
A dermatologist, appointed by Maf, had taken a biopsy and the results would be available next week.
Maf's independent medical adviser on the campaign, Dr Francesca Kelly, would not say if any residents had been evacuated from the spray zone.
nzherald.co.nz/environment
