16 Horses Now Positive For EIA

[DMK]

A single case isn’t unheard of, it’s not like it’s an eliminated disease. Cases always crop up in the Gulf States and who knows how many asymptomatic carriers are living in backyards, going their entire lives untested.

Now if we are talking some sort of blood doping product, possibly a blood derivative where one of the donor horses was positive and that blood was subsequently used to create a few vials of whatever the hell was dreamed up in some race horse version of a BALCO lab… Well, it’s easy to see how one untested horse became so many positive horses. For one trainer.

[Ghazzu]

Not that I think it is the cause here necessarily, but back in the day, there was a cluster of EIA positive horses at Rockingham Park and the spread was thought to have been by a vet going down the shedrow and tube deworming a bunch of horses.

[JB]

That sounds like the dental tool transmission potential as well, simply not properly cleaning equipment between uses. Ew.

[quarterhorseking]

Suspended at Albuquerque

With 21 horses euthanized, Taylor summarily suspended by Albuquerque stewards

[Texarkana]

I mean, you would have to be effing insane to let a horse from his barn into your facility at the moment without a quarantine.

Hopefully potentially exposed horses don’t just end up running under the name of an assistant.

[skydy]

Good. There is no good reason for this to have happened.

[DMK]

I’m a bit cynical, do we think the virus survives stomach acid, or given the era, is it possible the vet just fell on his sword? Because a whole lot of the latter was going on in the era (based on the fact that a lot of vets were pressure into doing unethical things that didn’t test, because testing was so limited).

On an entirely different topic, has anyone watched Cowboy Cartel? The one thing they never touched on was how the horses came out of effectively nowhere and won so handily in the futurity. Obviously because the focus on the investigation was elsewhere, but my suspicion was that there could have been some well funded research and application coming out of that training operation in order to improve performance on the track in both countries. And while some people were truly clueless about the connections, you know a significant chunk had to know or suspect something.

[Ghazzu]

Bloody noses and mucous membrane contact in the nasal passages.

[DMK]

I thought about that, and you know if it’s dry and winter it definitely happens a lot more. But for everyone to have that transmission from something that’s not a frequent occurrence?

[Ghazzu]

It was one incident, mentioned to me by a DVM in a regulatory position.
Never said it was a frequent occurrence, but have you ever passed an NG tube in a young, racing fit TB?
Epistaxis wouldn’t be a surprise to me, especially if they fling their head as the tube is withdrawn.

[DMK]

No ng tubes passed here, just the person dangling off the end of the twitch of the heretofore referenced one to three year olds

Just to clarify, by “frequent” I meant that one down the shedrow incident resulting in multiple exposures. Obviously not impossible, but unusual for sure.

[Ghazzu]

Certainly unusual, though iatrogenic transmission is a significant factor in EIA spread, globally speaking.
IIRC, this outbreak was well before Leroy Coggins developed the AGID test.

[skydy]

Has there been any explanation by the suspended trainer for the current outbreak? I can’t find any news to that affect.

[mommy_peanut]

https://paulickreport.com/news/the-biz/everyone-wants-a-witch-hunt-stewards-overturn-summary-suspension-connected-to-eia-positives

[mommy_peanut]

WTF

https://paulickreport.com/horse-care-category/usda-revokes-eia-testing-approval-from-texas-lab-after-falsified-results

[MorganMaresVT]

Woah. How deep and nasty is this going to get? And the trainer didn’t know the vet was up to anything with whatever identical treatment all 20 odd horses received from the vet?! We’ll see….

[skydy]

It must have been a “treatment” either so shoddily done, or not legal, for someone to falsify Coggins test results to hide it. What horrible sort of person would do that?

[Simkie]

Holy cow, WTAF is going on? Who on earth would think doctoring up some positive coggins as negatives wouldn’t get noticed??

[Ghazzu]

Yowza!!!

[skydy]

What do you guess is going on @Ghazzu? Why would any person or entity do this?