Vet denies using horses as guinea pigs

A vet denies deceiving trainers Mark Kavanagh and Danny O’Brien or using their racehorses as guinea pigs for a substance called vitamin complex.

Dr Tom Brennan said Kavanagh and O’Brien knew he was adding the vitamin complex to drips given to some of their horses and the Flemington trainers each paid $3000 for three bottles of it.

But none of them knew it contained cobalt nor set out to cheat, the vet told O’Brien and Kavanagh’s appeal against their cobalt disqualifications.

The trainers’ barrister Damian Sheales suggested Brennan and a friend wanted to develop products to sell in the equine industry.

“You were going to market it potentially to the wider industry, but you needed to test it and there was no way known that any trainer would agree to their horses being guinea pigs, and so you undertook this path on the basis of deception but you thought it was a win-win,” Sheales said.

Brennan repeatedly said that was garbage.

The vet said he was the one who knocked the idea of a product development business on the head.

Sheales said neither trainer mentioned the vitamin complex to stewards after their cobalt positives in January 2015 because they did not know about it at the time.

Brennan said that was garbage.

Sheales said Kavanagh’s business was worth about $300,000 a year to Flemington Equine Clinic, while the vet estimated O’Brien’s at about $250,000.

“You used this bottle because you were frightened of losing Kavanagh’s work, and that’s why you never told him,” Sheales said on Friday.

Brennan disagreed.

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“No, garbage. I told him and he paid me $3000 cash,” Brennan told the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal.

Brennan said he had never given a product to a horse without a trainer’s express permission.

Brennan has blamed former Flemington Equine vet Dr Adam Matthews for supplying the vitamin complex that Brennan in turn gave to horses in the Kavanagh and O’Brien stables, which Matthews denies.

A bottle Brennan sent to Kavanagh’s son, Sydney trainer Sam Kavanagh, was found to contain cobalt.

Sheales said Matthews never told Brennan the vitamin complex bottle cost $1000, but the vet disagreed.

Sheales said there were no records because Brennan never planned to charge for the vitamin complex, a product he knew cost “bugger all”, when the trainers started a drip regime.

Sheales said Brennan was greedy and after taking $2000 from mate Sam Kavanagh, “you just opportunistically hit up O’Brien for three grand because you knew he’d trust you and gave it to you”.

Brennan replied: “That’s garbage. Garbage. He knows it’s garbage, I know it’s garbage, you know it’s garbage.”

Brennan said he and the trainers did not cheat.

“We never thought we were cheating.

“We never knew that we were using cobalt.

“We thought we were just using vitamin B to help the recovery of these horses. That is all.”

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