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Equine Health Committee
Report
April 5, 2005
The
Equine Health Committee met on Tuesday, April 5, 2005 from 1:30 PM to 5:00
PM CST, during the NIAA 2005 Annual Meeting in St. Paul Minnesota, with 35
people present. Dr. Peter
Timoney served as the Chair and Ms. Amy Mann served as the Vice-Chair.
The
committee session focused on current equine health concerns.
The following speakers presented relevant information pertaining to
equine health.
Amelita
Fachianno, Equine Infectious Anemia (EIA): Proposed National Control
Program:
Presentation well
attended with good discussion following.
Discussion focused on concerns of states over implementing and
enforcing proposed program. Proposal
is intended to show a new approach to EIA with hopes that something
different might be considered with regard to EIA.
Question of whether more benefit could be achieved through proposal
than is currently being achieved. Suggestion
was made that regionalization may eventually provide more freedom for
horse owners.
Ms. Amy Mann, Piroplasmosis: Technical
Issues Surrounding Use of c-ELISA: Presentation highlighted
implementation of the c-ELISA and the problems that followed at National
Veterinary Services Laboratory (NVSL).
Ms. Mann gave a history of how the cELISA was developed and noted
that after ARS transferred the technology to NVSL, alterations to the
reagents used in the tests were made.
Consequently, the changes produced unreliable results and
ultimately forced USDA to withdraw the cELISA as the import test for
piroplasmosis. Mann underscored the industry’s desire to use the cELISA as
the import test for piroplasmosis. She
also stated that the horse industry would not support re-institution of
the cELISA until it was clear all problems associated with NVSL’s
execution of the test are resolved.
Dr. Josie Traub-Dargatz, 2005
Equine NAHMS Study
: Dr. Traub-Dargatz shared the plans for the 2005 Equine NAHMS Study, which
has just gotten underway. She
explained that the study would look at equine health and equine health
management practices at premises with more than 5 horses and at equine
events. The expectation is
that the final report of the study will be available in the middle of
2006.
Dr. S. Swenson Vesicular Stomatitis: 2004
Experience
: Dr. Sabrina Swensen of NVSL, APHIS, USDA briefed the committee on the
outbreaks of Vesicular Stomatitis during the summer and fall in Texas, New
Mexico and Colorado. She gave
the committee an overview of VS and indicated that this past outbreak of
VS behaved similar to the outbreaks seen in the 1990’s, following the
rivers north from Texas into New Mexico and Colorado.
Discussion ensued with regard to why Colorado’s cases seemed to
last later into the fall, early winter.
Historically, that would not be unusual in addition, it was
mentioned that Colorado had some unusually warm weather late into the
year. It was also mentioned
that Texas animal health officials had seen cases in areas they had not
expected to find cases and it was questioned whether that indicated a
change in the epidemiology of the disease.
It was determined that the disease is a national disease, although
in recent history it has only occurred in certain western regions giving
VS the reputation of being only a western states problem.
Dr. Annette Whiteford, West
Nile Virus: 2004 Update
: Dr. Whiteford discussed the state of California’s experience with WNV
this past year. She
acknowledged that horse owners in the state had been fairly ready for the
outbreak, having seen its progression west.
Nonetheless, they did have a high number of cases, including in
vaccinated horses. Also noted
was the higher rate of mortality associated with the disease.
Dr. Tim Cordes, Disease
Reclassification Office of International Epizootics (OIE):
What does this mean?
Equine Viral
Arteritis (EVA): Proposed
National Control Program
: Dr. Cordes gave an
extensive overview of the new OIE list of diseases in which the former
List A and List B diseases were combined into one list.
This was done to simplify the list of important diseases needing
reporting but also to dispel the myth that the A List contained diseases
that were somehow more important than those on the B List.
He also mentioned that OIE had expanded its reporting requirements
to include “evidence of infection”.
This triggered significant discussion within the committee.
Dr.
Cordes also gave a presentation regarding Equine Viral Arteritis and the
efforts to establish a post-entry screening test to determine the EVA
virus status of imported stallions and semen.
He gave a history of how the issue has developed and progressed and
reported that the hold up now is due to the legal interpretations of what
can and cannot be done under the SPS agreements of the WTO.
The
Committee encouraged that a national meeting be hosted by the American
Horse Council with significant participation from USDA to address the
significant domestic and international issues related to EVA.
A position statement to this affect was adopted during the business
session of the meeting.
Old
Business: None
New
Business:
-
There
were no new resolutions accepted.
-
1
new position statement was adopted on EVA
-
2
existing resolutions were amended
-
1
existing resolutions was removed
General
discussion:
The Equine Health
Committee had excellent attendance this year and lively, engaged
discussion. It was in sharp
contrast to the last two meetings of this committee.
In addition to the excellent agenda, the fact that the committee
was not scheduled up against significant competing interests helped the
attendance factor significantly. However,
at the time of the business session the attendance did drop precipitously.
Committee
Session adjourned at 5:00 pm.
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