THE HORSE GAZETTE

Health

Why coggins?

By Ingrid Edisen Part 2 of 2

Quarantined horses of Shackleford Banks. Photo provided by Carolyn Mason of the Foundation for Shackleford Horses, Inc.

“Infected horses don’t necessar- ily become less infectious over time and we have no good tests to measure the level of virus in the blood.”

horse owners spend $50 mil- lion annually to test. (Issel, C.J., Cordes, T.R., and Halstead, S. 2007. “Control of EIA Should Take Some New Directions.” Article#8787 from The Horse and used as a resource with the permission of author Dr. Timo- thy Cordes) With the lessening evidence of positive horses with the more available population, this makes one wonder why test at all? And since evidence of the disease tends to cluster in the Hot Zone, the argument is now being made to change the blanket policies and make them more focused on the more active areas. Dr. Issel noted that

Arkansas has a program that allows for trained lay people to inspect the paperwork of horses going to congregation points. It is interesting to note that Arkansas also mandates a 440 yard distance kept between horse populations, and not just 200 yards.

published in The Horse, March 4, 2007, Dr. Issel along with co-author Glade Anderson, documents a “pocket” situation in the Uintah Basin, Utah, dur- ing 1998-2000. There, a high presence of EIA was found among free roaming horses which consisted of a mix of pri- vately owned horses and Bureau of Land Management (BLM) animals. However, thirty miles away, the prevalence of the dis- ease dropped off sharply and it was determined that even those infected horses originated from the Uintah Basin. Up to that point it’d been assumed EIA was so non-existent that testing was hardly ever done. Take also the case

Case Studies In an article #9038

arisen in the U.S. over the ex- pense and push to have Coggins tests repeatedly done on healthy horses. Dr. Coggins noted that it does not make much sense to constantly test horses that are in the mainstream and are used in competitions or public venues. These are healthy horses after all. Currently, in the U.S. where positives can be “caught” is more during the sale phase, during which a horse’s ownership changes hands and a Coggins test should be drawn and accessed. Also, pockets of infected horse populations) crop up within the U. S. it is rarer these days to such a situation within this country. It is estimated that

A bit of a furor has Dr. Coggins relates,

manages, with the National Park Service, the Shackleford Banks wild horses, whose numbers range from 110 to 130 indi- viduals on the nine-mile-long island. All Foundation work is done purely on a 501(c)(3) non- profit basis, with the Foundation subsisting primarily on public donations.

the humane interests used EIA as a ‘lever’ to try to stop this annual pony foal auction. Yes, these pony herds were infected with EIA.”

plained that a pony herd consists of a “family” that contains a stallion and 12 to 15 mares and their offspring. “The USDA and the

Dr. Knowles ex-

population, made famous in the book “Misty of Chincoteague,” also had EIA ramifications among its members. Dr. Ralph Knowles, DVM, now retired from the USDA, remembers that “in the mid-1970’s certain animal humane interests tried to stop the annual July sale of the Chincoteague Ponies. This auction sale is held by the Chin- coteague Fire Department which owns them. In mid-July there is the pageantry of swimming the Chincoteague Ponies and their foals across the narrow body of water that separates Assoteague Island National Seashore and the town of Chincoteague, VA which is covered by the national news media. “One particular year

Another equid island

maining on Shackleford Banks tested negative each year, for six consecutive years, the herds were declared EIA-free, and quarantine restrictions were lifted for the island. The Foundation co-

lated facility on the mainland. The band of volunteers has been caring for those quarantined horses for over 11-years, and has provided blood samples to Dr. Issel for research. The mainland quarantine facility is in compli- ance with NC State law, and is periodically inspected by State Veterinary staff. After every horse re-

in riding ability to a certain animal. These inapparent car- riers look no different from a “healthy” horse. The facility even has offered proof that some animals, if left to live out their lives as inapparent carriers, can eventually kick out the disease to such a point that antibodies in the serum are found in such low quantities that the horse may be reported falsely as negative.

The Future

State of Virginia Animal Health Officials insisted on a Coggins test of all ponies on Assateague Island. Then these ponies were separated into an EIA ‘clean’ herd and an EIA ‘infected’ herd,” he said. The clean herd was kept at the South end of the Island and the others were maintained at the North end. “A buffer zone (no ponies area) 400 feet wide separated the two pony populations,” Dr. Knowles recalls.

of the Shackleford Banks wild horses. Carolyn Mason, Chair- person of the Foundation for Shackleford Horses, Inc., de- scribes how their group of dedi- cated volunteers has performed care for a set of positive horses for the past eleven years, largely for the benefit of EIA research. What happened is this: back in 1996, during a roundup and EIA testing on Shackelford Banks (one of North Carolina’s “Outer Banks” barrier islands), the wild horse herds living there were found to be 41% EIA positive. Those horses were removed and destroyed. When a follow-up testing revealed several more positive horses, those too were removed but the argument was made to quarantine them, ac- cording to state law, at an iso-

Fire Department then could resume their annual pony foal auction—selling animals from the ‘Coggins clean’ herd. For- tunately all of the infected pony consisted of older ponies and by attrition in six years all of the older ponies had expired. This was a win-win situation,” Dr. Knowles said. Since 1987, there is

“The Chincoteague

Chinese Attenuated Live Virus vaccine would hold for the U.S. population proves to be a perplexing case in itself. After all, it is the nature of the virus to mutate wildly as it maximizes its hold on a host’s body. The mutations mean that the virus protein is constantly changing which makes it next to impos- sible to devise any vaccine that will cover all the bases. Back in the 1980’s there was a large EIA outbreak in China and a vaccine was formulated and given on a compulsory basis to the horse population in that country. This forced the EIA there to subside. It also means that automatically any horse from China that was alive then and given the vaccine will test positive no matter what for the rest of its life. Experts do not see such a blanket mandatory edict as having much success here in the U.S. for one thing. And then there is the problem of coming up with a vaccine that will catch whatever protein footprint the virus is displaying at that particular point in time.

For more informa-

tion, a free video/DVD can be ordered from the USDA by con- tacting BetsyJ.Sillers@aphis. usda.gov; (301) 734-8711 or visit www.aphis.usda.gov/ani- mal_health/animal_dis_spec/ horses/. A print copy of Equine Infectious Anemia: Uniform Methods and Rules, Effective January 10, 2007 will also be provided.

List of Resources: Dr. Leroy Coggins,

Cornell University, retired Dr. Timothy Cordes,

USDA Dr. Charles Issel,

fully quarantined from other equids and sponsors are matched

Visit us at: www.HorseGazette.com

FRIENDS is to accept all hors- es testing positive for EIA in Florida and to turn no horse away,” states director Debra Beye-Barwick. These animals live

also a non-profit operation in Florida called the FRIENDS Ranch that accepts test positive horses to care for them the rest of their natural lives. Fifty-two horses reside there today (al- though the number fluxuates). “The mission of

University of Kentucky Dr. Ralph Knowles,

USDA, retired Both of the following

accept tax-deductible dona- tions:

Foundation for Shack-

leford Horses, Inc., 306 Gold- en Farm Road, Beaufort, NC 28516, www.shacklefordhorses. org/

FRIENDS Ranch,

www.eiahorses.org, contact:

Debra Beye-Barwick, Director

“we have to think globally. We will be hosting an international horse event in Kentucky in 2010.” It would not make sense for the U.S. to become lax about testing and then require stringent rules on incoming international equine ‘guests’ only to possibly expose those ‘guests’ to EIA.” Dr. Knowles travels internationally working on horses and has seen much EIA around the world. It is estimated that the horse popu- lations in some other countries routinely display a positive rate of thirty percent. Animals are hampered (or die) as the disease cycles through them. The hope that the

Dr. Knowles said,

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