Supporting Equine Welfare
Professor
Stephen May MA VetMB PhD DVR DEO FRCVS DipECVS, RCVS & European
Specialist in Equine Surgery, Professor of Equine Medicine and Surgery,
Royal Veterinary College
The Horse Trust is much
more than a retirement home, although this still is, and will continue
to be, an important part of its activities. More than 40 years ago, The
Home of Rest for Horses, as it was then known, recognised welfare needs
beyond its gentle pastures and restful stables with the award of grants
to the Animal Health Trust and the Royal Veterinary College for their
hospital facilities. At the same time, an annual provision (which
continued for 17 years) was made to the British Horse Society to
support the inspectors employed by the Riding Establishments Act
Committee.
In 1982, The Horse Trust awarded its first welfare
grant to a university for a project aimed at investigating a problem
affecting a substantial number of this country’s horses and ponies,
namely laminitis. This led to the installation of the first gamma
camera in a university hospital, at the Royal Veterinary College, which
was used initially to study blood circulation in the horse’s hoof.
However, ultimately, as is always the case with the best types of
research, through collaboration between clinicians in Newmarket and the
Royal Veterinary College, this had the knock-on consequence of
introducing bone scanning as a routine diagnostic tool in the horse for
identifying stress fractures.
The following year, a grant was made to Bristol
University Veterinary School to look at "Air Hygiene and Chronic
Obstructive Pulmonary Disease in the Horse", and, a year later, grants
were made to the Animal Health Trust, to look at infectious problems in
horses, and the Royal Veterinary College, to look at grass sickness.
Over the next 20 years, the number and size of the
welfare grants increased, with two criteria remaining paramount: the
first was that grants must have a strong welfare justification, and the
second that they should only be given for projects supported by high
quality science.
In the traditions of the founders of The Horse Trust,
and also respecting the source of donations, the Scientific Committee
felt that none of the work should involve invasive techniques on
horses. The Horse Trust also recognised that it had a complementary
contribution to make alongside other important funders of research, in
particular, the Horserace Betting Levy Board and the Thoroughbred
Breeders Association. Therefore, its welfare projects are targeted
predominantly on problems of horses and ponies not involved in racing,
including the problems of older companion animals, like those it cares
for in retirement, and it does not support research on horse breeding.
Currently, The Horse Trust continues to support
projects which increase our understanding of diseases, with the aim of
improving both our ability to diagnose, and also to treat, our horses'
problems:
As with problems in
people, fundamental to our treatment of equine diseases is an
understanding of the molecular mechanisms involved. The Horse Trust
supported the sequencing of the genome of the bacterium responsible for
strangles, and this has led to support for further work based, at the
Animal Health Trust, on improved diagnostics for the more effective
management of strangles, and work which should lead to improvement in
the vaccine available for this terrible condition. Other molecular
studies supported by The Horse Trust are looking at the genes involved
in recurrent airway obstruction, the genes involved in resistance to
wormers, and the genes involved in the development of equine sarcoids.
In the brief time allotted to me, I can only give a
flavour of the projects funded through the £2 million forward
commitments made by The Horse Trust from January 2006. Historically,
the poor old horse has fallen between a number of stools when it comes
to research funding, which has enhanced the importance of The Horse
Trust’s funding in this area.
Despite being regarded as a food animal in Europe,
with disastrous consequences to the range of therapeutic agents
available for us to use in horses, the horse has not been classified in
this country as an agricultural animal, denying funds from the
Agricultural Research Council when it was in existence.
More recently, the emphasis of the Biotechnology and
Biological Sciences Research Council on cellular and molecular research
and, when it involved animals, research on models of disease in
laboratory species, has led to a similar exclusion of applied equine
research from the projects it supports. Therefore, as the retiring
Chairman of the Scientific Subcommittee which advises the Trustees on
welfare projects worthy of The Horse Trust’s support, I can confirm the
vital role of The Horse Trust, and the continued need for its presence
as a key funder of projects aimed at improving the welfare of a
staggering estimate of up to 975,000 horses, ponies and donkeys in this
country.
