14/01/2011

(2011, January 11th) In 2007 when Nestore, a horse who had been living here in Filicaja in a herd with twelve other equines, was found positive – only him - to the just introduced EIA mandatory controls, I was astonished.

How?! It seemed impossible to me that the disease they were trying to convince me was terribly dangerous and highly infectious, had stayed with Nestore for four years, without causing harm to the other horses living with him night and day, and without making any of them positive too. So I began to understand the EIA-positive horses were not this big danger, and that behind all the alarmism there was panic caused by scarce knowledge—and maybe something else too.

We isolated Nestore in a large paddock and then we started looking for a buddy for him – out of respect of his herd animal’s nature – and thus our Association came in contact with many owners of healthy horses that, somehow, had come in contact with the virus. Some owners had given up and sent their horses to the slaughterhouse, others instead were fighting.

Now, in that paddock, there are seven beautiful and healthy EIA-positive horses. Their owners had to fight a war to make the authorities respect their right to keep in life their horses.

During 2009’s round of checks, the Italian local health authorities (ASL) have tested more than 237.000 equines. 338 were positive, and thus destined to isolation or slaughter (the writer reputes that killing an EIA-positive horse falls among the crime of “killing animals”; art. 544-bis CP).

More than 200.000 tests every year represent a huge organizational and financial effort, all for an easily tractable and difficult to spread disease. Especially with just a 0,14% positive rate, which is all but irrelevant, in spite of the fact 2009 was the first year in which the tests were carried out in the entire country (or almost so).

The EU legislation simply states the various countries must ascertain the horses moving across the borders don’t show clinic symptoms of the disease (so, theoretically, all those horses could be as positive and healthy as ours). In fact, it’s scientifically proved EIA-positive horses are not probable sources of contagion; only the sick ones are. Anyway, most European countries carry out checks, but only on horses taking part to major sports events with a high concentration of animals.

In Italy, 200.000 blood samples are tested every year. It doesn’t matter if the horse the blood was taken from is destined to a competition with hundreds of other entrants, is used for trail riding, or simply lives in a paddock with another equine and its owner. Can you imagine the huge organizational and financial effort required to collect more than 200.000 blood samples, sometime in not easily reachable places? Only the 0,14% of the equines is found positive and the 90% of these will stay healthy for their entire life, and will never be contagious.

For a disease that strikes in a clear form only the 0,01% of the equines inside our national borders, we launched a massive offensive to contrast it by analyzing the blood of all the horses in the Country. Well, no. Of almost all the horses, because the animals bred or imported for slaughter are not tested, even when they come from marshy areas of some European countries where, due to the massive presence of carriers and the lack of care for the sick horses, the disease is endemic. These imported and potentially positive horses (80.000 in 2006), during the stops along their death journey, share stables with other horses destined to shows—without infecting them.

The OIE (the animal equivalent of the World Health Organization), list two diagnostic test for EIA: ELISA and AGID (Coggins’ Test). Positive ELISA results must be confirmed by equally positive Coggins’ Test results in order to declare an animal as EIA-positive. The Italian legislation follows the OIE’s directives: if the Coggins’ Test is negative, the horse is negative too.

The newspapers have recently talked about Rocket, a mare living in the Rome province with her two owners. Our association is following her case since last summer, when her routine EIA sample was taken. It was positive to the ELISA Test, and negative to the Coggins’ Test. To be absolutely sure, a second sample was taken, which turned to be ELISA dubious and Coggins negative. Most of us would have understood the mare is to be considered negative. However, the Local Sanitary Agency (ASL) wanted to carry on another test, the Immunoblotting, a test which is not specific for EIA, and whose reliability is disputed by scientists. Positive.

The mare was put under sanitary sequestration. Her owners asked, at least, for a repeat of the test, maybe done by another lab. No. It was not granted. Why? A lot of doubts stir in our minds. Why have they wanted so badly to declare that mare positive even going against the current legislation? And then, how many of the horses tested in the Lazio region have been victims of such an “offensive” to prove their (false) positivity? The percentage of positive horses in Lazio is the 300% higher than the national average. Is really the EIA so present in this region or, just like in Rocket’s case, they have used “alternative techniques” with the precise intent to declare them positive? How many horses have been slaughtered because they were declared positive with a test not admitted and not 100% reliable, since the true reference test was negative? How many owners surrendered to the arrogance of power? Why in November 2010, the Lazio Regional Director found necessary to remind the ASL veterinaries that the only reference test is the Coggins one?

The plan against the Equine Infectious Anemia dates back to 2007. In fact, in 2006 some bags of infective blood derivates were used in some Italian breeding farms and were sold abroad too. Those bags had been made in Italy, using the blood taken by slaughter-bound horses imported from Romania, and it was followed by an international scandal.

“The block of the importations from countries that don’t guarantee the respect of sanitary rules and the animals’ rights would be a valid prevention system,” said the competent Minister Pecoraro Scanio in an Corriere della Sera interview. Valid and cheap, this system would have on one hand defended the beloved creatures of those people who don’t see their horse just as locomotion mean or a sport object, but a life mate; on the other hand, they would have obliged such countries to improve the life conditions of their horses (Switzerland had just adopted a legislation similar to the one suggested years ago by On. Pecoraro Scanio).

Instead we have arrived to the madness of wanting to carry out tests on the whole equine population of a Country—every year. More, we are trying to turn negative horses into positive ones. For what reason? The veterinary who prepared those bags in 2006 has really been so unreasonable and unprofessional not to carry on some tests at the Zoo Prophylaxis Institute? I find hard to believe this massive plan of controls is due to strictly sanitary reasons, given the tractability of the disease, its scarce infectivity and very low presence inside the national borders.

What should we do then against the dogs’ Leishmania, whose presence in Italy is 2600% higher than EIA’s, can be transmitted to humans and has often devastating effects on the animals?

(Data source: IZS)

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