Quercia was declared EIA positive on May 2010. She too (like other EIA positive animals) had lived for years with other horses, in a riding stable near Perugia, without ever developing the disease and, more importantly, without ever transmitting the virus to the other horses she came in contact with.

Her owner Tanja tried several solutions to keep her mare close to her, because she was very fond of Quercia, who had been just a filly when she arrived at the riding stable in 2001.

This is an excerpt of a letter written by Tanja (who has Swiss origins) on 10th June 2010, a testimony of the unfair treatment owners of horses positive to Equine Infectious Anaemia must suffer:
”Unfortunately, among the latest Coggins’ tests there is a positive one, and it is the Murgese mare, the most beloved by all of us. We really don’t understand how it could happen, it seems impossible. We asked to the ASL (local health authorities) to repeat the test because we wanted to be absolutely sure and to check it hadn’t been a mistake (mistakes do happen, because out of 16 tests, we received only 15 results...we don’t know where the last one ended up...), but they refused and are pushing for having the mare slaughtered. We find absurd to kill such a healthy, nice, good and sweet mare. Our hearts are really weeping. The isolation of a horse should be forbidden; to us it the same as mistreatment.
With great joy I found you on the internet and you are my only hope should my Quercia be really positive. Please, help us!”

Quercia arrived to IHP’s rescue centre on 23rd September 2010. Since then, she has been living in a herd with her new friends, all in perfect health. Her story, as the tales of Nestore, Foxy and all the other guests “under sanitary sequestration”, demonstrates how the current legislation needs to be modified, putting an end to a series of controls unnecessary, expensive and that create useless troubles for the horses’ owner (if not the killings of healthy animals). And while all of this happens, Italy doesn’t run any check on equines imported for slaughter or which, for whatever reason, arrive from abroad, thus demonstrating what we have been saying for years: EIA is not dangerous nor it is not easily transmissible. When will this contradiction end?

Sign the petition to free Rocket, another victim of the EIA legislation…a mare unjustly put under sanitary sequestration and isolated into a stall!