EIA "threat" is a myth for money

If your veterinarian tells you EIA is a serious threat to your horse’s health, either he/she doesn’t know the facts, or wants to continue to rake in a steady stream of income based on inaccurate “scare” information. (About $36 million is spent annually for Coggins tests.)
The EIA threat to your horse’s health is nothing compared to the “mandatory slaughter of your Coggins positive horse by many state laws.”
If you want to take your horse to a public facility, cross state lines, or even board at some stables, you’ll need a current Coggins test and that test is going to cost you while putting money in the pockets of veterinarians, testing laboratories and state agencies. If the horse tests negatively, it just costs money. But if the horse tests positive, the most common result is that your horse will be euthanized and there is virtually nothing you can do about it.
I’m not against the Coggins test…it is just a test. What I’m against is the state laws, supported by veterinarians, which slaughter happy, healthy, useful horses which are of no danger to other horses, but which happen to be “in-apparent” carriers. (If you want to protect horses in public places make it mandatory the horse’s temperature is taken daily.)
To support laws that needlessly slaughter useful horses is inexcusable.
Both Bayer Animal Health and the American Association of Equine Practitioners have claimed “Equine Infectious Anemia is a fatal disease that threatens the world’s horse population.”
There are no facts, figures or even light data to support their claim.
There is no national record of how many horses die of EIA in the US each year. Ask your vet how many EIA fatal cases he or she has seen and the most common answer will be “none”. Check with your state veterinary office and ask how many deaths in the state due to EIA each year and the answer will be “none” or “we don’t know.”
I asked Bayer to support its claim and Dr. Kenton Morgan said it gets its information from AAEP. Asked if he or anyone at Bayer questions such statements and he replied, “We don’t edit the stuff, we just post it.”
Posting such stuff keeps the myth alive and my cost your horse his or her life.
I have tried and tried to get a response from the AAEP education committee, but no response is ever made. I’ve challenge several AAEP members to debate the EIA issues on a radio program, and the challenge has always been ignored.
If EIA was such a threat to horses wouldn’t you think horses would be dying from the disease, and don’t you think there would be an effort to eradicate it?
Dr. Don O’Connor, Wisconsin epidemiologist (a person who investigates epidemics and causes) says Wisconsin’s policy is to “control, not eradicate.”
Asked if EIA is an epidemic in Wisconsin, Dr. O’Connor says, “No.” Asked how many EIA deaths were recorded in Wisconsin for a three year period, Dr. O’Connor said, “None.”
While EIA did not kill a single horse during that three year period, Marjorie Pommerening had to have her two horses euthanized (slaughtered) because they tested positive even though they showed no symptoms and where happy, hearty, useful horses. So, statistically, while EIA has not killed a horse in recent memory in Wisconsin, the state’s control policy has officially killed at least two.
The number of new Coggins positive cases (not deaths or even sickness) found each year amounts to .0002857% of the 7 million horses in the US.
If that’s a threat to the world’s horse population, I’m at a loss to know how.
Keep the Coggins test; brand a “positive” horse if you wish, and simply require the horse’s temperature to be taken daily if it is to travel or be housed in a public horse facility. Get your veterinarian and state legislator to support that and save the life of a lot of wonderful horses.
Unless you and horse organizations demand new laws nothing is going to change.