As we have seen in other articles regarding this topic, the Equine Infectious Anemia is a disease that must be reported to the competent authorities. To move a horse inside the EU borders, from a country to another, it’s only necessary that a veterinary check-up certifies the equine doesn’t show any clinical symptom of the disease. If the equine comes from a breeding farm with one or more cases of EIA (or if it came in contact, in some way, with positive animals), it’s necessary to test the animal twice with the Coggins’ test (the second time 90 days after the first one), after the positive animal have been taken away. Both tests must be negative (Dir. 90/426/EC, applied in Italy with DPR 243/94).

In 2007, the European Commission decided that the horses sent from Romania to all the other EU countries must be tested with the Coggin’s test within 30 days from the journey. (Decision 2007/269/EC).

For the equines living in other european countries, it isn’t normally necessary any test, unless the animal shows symptoms that could lead to suspect EIA or takes part to competitions, fairs or other events with a gathering of equines.

In UK, both in the above cases and in some random controls, the Coggins’ test is used as reference test, while the ELISA is used as quick test, cheap but not very reliable: “The Coggins’ test is currently the only test recognized officially for the purpose of international movement of horses. An ELISA test for EIA has recently been developed. As this test can provide results more quickly and economically than the Coggins test, it is widely used for routine screening in populations where EIA is not suspected (…).Greater sensitivity means that the ELISA test can produce occasional false positive results and positive results must therefore be clarified by the Coggins test.” (Source: EIA Codes 2011, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs). Thus, in absence of symptoms or well-grounded suspicions, the horses taking parts to competitions or fairs are tested with the ELISA test. If it gives a positive result, the more expensive and long Coggins’ test is used to confirm or rule out the positivity.

In Ireland, the admitted tests for EIA are the Coggins and, in suborder, the ELISA. (source: Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food). In Germany, the Coggins’ is the reference test (Verordnung zum Schutz gegen die Ansteckende Blutarmut der Einhufer; Bundesministeriums für Ernährung, Landwirtschaft und Verbraucherschutz. 04/10/2010). In Austria, to the horses coming from Romania, is required only the Coggins’ test (Kundmachung des österreichischen Bundesministeriums für Gesundheit, Familie und Jugend; GZ: 74100/0049-IV/B/5/2007. It essentially applies the European Community’s Decision we mentioned above, 2007/269/EC).

The list could be endless.

Let’s suppose now, an Italian citizen decide to their horse in another EU country. They must have a vet certify their horse shows no EIA symptoms and has not been in proximity of centers of infection (as per DPR 243/94).

Instead, it gets complex if they want to stay home, because they must mandatory test their horse with the Coggins’ test. In a recent interview to an OIE (the animal World Health Organization) high official in Brussels, we described the above hypothetical situations and asked if it was true that, for an Italian horse, it was more complex to stay home than travel abroad. The answer, after a sigh, was: “Yes, it is so.”

In Italy, as well known, we are smarter and more creative than others, so we not only test ALL the horses living inside the national borders, but in some cases we used some new techniques as the Western Blot (AKA Immunoblot), even with negative Coggins’ tests and despite the fact it seems the laboratory doing such testing, is certified only for the Coggins and ELISA tests (rev. 19 del 18/10/2010 of Accredia).

Besides the doubts raised by the use of the Western Blot even in the presence of a negative Coggins, given the apparent lack of certification we also get doubts about the methodologies used or the possibility the antibodies used could be not specific (for the task). We would appreciate if the Italian lab that uses the Immunoblot for EIA gave us a documented refutation they get the antibodies for said test from the Gluck Equine Research Center (Kentucky - USA) and that they aren’t for diagnostic use but for research use only.

All of this because, should it be confirmed this lab buys antibodies for not diagnostic use from that American research center (they cannot be found in Italy and, as far as we know, perhaps not even in the rest of Europe), it’s our opinion we could be in the presence of a scientific research conducted on equines belonging to not necessary consentient private citizens, and whose results could have led to the slaughtering or isolation of animals that, according to the in force legislation and the certified tests made by the same lab, should haven’t been slaughtered nor isolated.

In 2009 in Italy, there have been 338 cases of positivity to EIA (source: IZSLT, 2009), a lot of them probably with a positive Coggins, some perhaps not. In Romania, in 2009, the estimations of positive EIA cases go from 6. 000 (according to Swiss veterinary sources) to 11.000 (according to German veterinary sources), with controls we believe to be not as massive as ours. With such a high number of cases, it’s understandable the European Commission obliged Romania to check (with coggins’ test) all the departing equines.

Italy, the oh-so-much-better-country-than-others in the EIA controls, so much it uses “innovative” techniques to find positivity and tests over 200.000 equines every year, doesn’t test the equines bred for meat production, nor tests the horses coming from other EU countries, if they are slaughter-bound or their permanence in the country is, for whatever reason, temporary (barring specific regulations/requirements decided by shows and fairs holders/hosts).

According to an analysis purposefully superficial, it could look like in Italy we aren’t concerned about the disease, but about getting only positive results. In 2009 the percentage of the disease in Italy has been of the 0,14%. If we remove the outliers (statically abnormal results), the percentage drops to the 0,097%, despite having the borders open to the infection and ten years of equine transportation without any kind of EIA controls (source: IZSLT, 2009 - To remove the outliers, we chose to remove the results of the Region with the highest number of positive cases and the Region with the highest number of equines among those Regions with zero positivity). Considering a very high percentage of positive equines will never get sick and that, as such they “aren’t generally able to transmit the disease through blood-sucking insects” (Italian National Veterinary Association, 25th November 2009), we can conclude that the infection’s spreading potential is almost nil.

Thanks to the data disclosed, we believe IZS has amply demonstrated EIA is not among this country’s emergencies, despite the fact some methodologies used could perhaps have wrongly increased the numbers (of positives).

However, we are saddened to think that, in order to demonstrate this, hundreds of horses were slaughtered or isolated in the past years. Maybe another way could have been found to reach this same conclusion.