FBI Chasing Piroplasmosis Quarantine Escapees
TheHorse.com reports that two horses from Missouri that tested positive for equine piroplasmosis were removed from their quarantined stable without authorization on Wednesday night. Quarantine and testing of horses on the farm were implemented following identification of piroplasmosis in a Quarter Horse at a Missouri equine clinic. Five other positive horses were also identified and were euthanized with their owners' consent. The only other alternatives for piroplasmosis-positive horses in the US are long-term quarantine until negative or shipping them to a country where the disease is endemic. The Missouri Department of Agriculture, local officials and FBI are investigating.
Taking horses from a reportable disease quarantine is incredibly stupid.
Firstly, someone's going to notice. The authorities know what horses are quarantined and who owns them. No one has said who is suspected to have cut the padlocks to get at the horses. I'm not saying that it was necessarily the owners who did it, but who would go to such effort to break an infected horse out of quarantine? I don't imagine they thought that the FBI would be involved.
Secondly, the horses are not being quarantined just because someone's trying to give the owners a hard time. This is being done because of the presence of a severe disease that is not normally present in the US. While it's not highly transmissible, the fact that multiple horses on this farm were postiive certainly shows that transmission can occur, be it through the appropriate tick vectors or other routes (e.g. contaminated needles).
Let's hope the people who took the horses come to their senses or get caught soon, so that the disease is not spread further. I assume that if there are other horses stabled where the escapees are eventually found, that those horses will need to be quarantined as well. I wonder if the people who might be harbouring the fugutive horses have thought of that.
