How the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture Helps the Horse Industry

- Okay, so today our speaker is Dr. Nancy Diehl from the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture.

She has a history at Penn State as well.

So she got her bachelor's and master's in animal science here.

She went to U Penn for veterinary school.

She spent several years in equine practice and then actually was here at Penn State as a professor for several years in the equine science area.

She then decided to go join the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture where she joined the Horse Racing Commission for a number of years, and now as you can see, her title on her slide is part of the Bureau of Animal Health and Diagnostic Services as an animal health inspector for Region 7.

So if some of that was perhaps gibberish to you, I'm sure she'll explain what that means and what her role is at the PDA.

We're excited to have her here to talk about how the PDA helps the horse industry.

So with that, I will turn it over to our speaker.

- Hey, hello everybody.

Thank you all for coming.

I'm really excited to be able to do this presentation.

And as Danielle said, I currently am a domestic animal health inspector for Region 7.

The Bureau of Animal Health and Diagnostic Services, its main job is to help control and contain the spread of important animal diseases, and that covers all livestock species as well as pet-type species.

So, we probably have fewer things we're involved in with pet-type animals, but they are included with some of our regulations.

And domestic animal health inspectors would probably be the people you would interact with the most.

We're kind of out in the field doing inspections, doing, checking on places, helping to educate.

Although our main job isn't meant to be education, we do a lot of that because education helps people follow regulations.

That's kind of our philosophy.

There's also, oh, I should back up.

There's seven regions in the state and I'll show you a map at the end.

And there's a link to all the regions in the state, so the state's divided into seven regions.

Region 7 is where I work and we are in sort of the southeast section of Pennsylvania.

So that's a little bit of a breakdown.

Every region, also along with animal health inspectors, has a regional field veterinarian.

So there's lots of people within your region that you can reach out to.

So a, the couple things I wanna talk about today are diseases with regulatory implications, animal disease traceability, and how our licensing might work with that.

Little bit about certificate of veterinary inspections or CVIs, or health certificates, and a little bit about our role in the horse racing industry.

Now, the reason, well, I just have a quick caveat.

You know, I'm gonna talk about regulations here, but I don't, nothing I say really should be construed for any one specific situation that you have or you're thinking about because even though the regulations are written as they are, who falls under them, how they fall under them and how we deal with it can vary from incident to incident or person to person.

So, please don't construe anything as anything specific to any one situation.

We try to, you know, help deal with those individually.

And I chose the title, it's a little bit boring I think, but it always reminds me of that old joke about, I'm from the government, I'm here to help you.

And a lot of people, you know, worry about what we're gonna do and how we're gonna proceed and how we interact with the industry.

And I can tell you sincerely that those of us in the field, we really want to educate and help people comply with the regulations.

The regulations have been in place, some of them for a very long time, and there's nothing that we do that can really change those, but what we wanna do is help you comply with the regulations, help you understand them, and help expedite things.

So, we really feel strongly about that.

So, we're not exactly the sheriff in town.

So, to start out with diseases with regulatory implications, and these are what we call reportable and actionable.

So these are diseases that will be, or should be reported to the Department of Agriculture, and we take some kind of action.

So we'll talk a little bit about equine herpes myeloencephalitis, EHV-1, the, specifically the neurologic form, equine infectious anemia, and rabies.

And I'm not gonna talk a lot about the diseases per se, because that's another topic for someone with that specialty, but I wanna introduce them and explain to you how we react to them and what the implications are if you bump up against any of these.

So, equine herpes viruses, there's a whole bunch of different strains.

The one that we are most interested in is the EHV-1, which causes abortion in mares, respiratory tract disease, and occasional neurologic disease.

And this has become more of an issue in the last, I don't know, maybe 10 years.

It, time goes pretty quick, but there seems to have been a strain that causes more severe neurologic disease and seems to be more contagious than what we've dealt with years ago.

So it's become a little bit more of an important disease than, you know, if you've been around in the industry for a very, very long time when we knew about it but we didn't quite have the level of concern that we do in more recent years.

So again, just briefly, just so you know where we're coming from, EHV-1 is a, the neurological form can vary from horse to horse, but we're usually seeing weakness or paralysis, sometimes loss of bladder function, sometimes front end signs.

A lot of horses will improve in five to seven days, but it can take longer.

And a lot of horses unfortunately either die or are euthanized because of complications or the difficulty of dealing with a down neurologic course.

And there are tests for that using whole blood and nasal swabs.

Now, when and how do we get involved?

Like how does PDA know that there's a neurologic horse out there that has EHV-1?

Well, remember I mentioned it's a reportable disease, so veterinarians are obligated to report either a suspicious or a positively diagnosed horse.

So, veterinarian will report it to the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture if they're suspicious or they know they have a case.

Similarly, if the laboratory diagnoses a case either by blood or swab or on postmortem exam, we work and PADLS, the Pennsylvania Animal Diagnostic Lab System, is tied in with us, so, you know, they would let us know.

And sometimes horse owners reach out to us directly, especially if they have prior experience with field staff, they might reach out to us directly and they certainly can do that.

There is a hotline number for people to call if they need it.

So, if we have EHV-1 diagnosed on a premises, unfortunately, that premises is subject to quarantine.

Now, quarantine will mean that animals cannot come and go off of a property.

Likewise, a lot of implements, materials, equipment that are used on the property cannot be moved on or off.

So we're kind of, to be honest, we're kind of shutting the place down.

But we look at a lot of things when we make these considerations like how we're gonna, how we're going to do the quarantine and how we're gonna institute or recommend biosecurity procedures to help keep this disease contained.

So we'll look at the number and type of animals, equine animals on the property, how they're housed, because that can affect the spread of the disease and how we try to help manage the situation.

We look at whether there's continued affected horses.

So for example, if we just have one horse on the property that is neurologic and is then undiagnosed with EHV, if that horse dies or is euthanized and removed from the premises, obviously a lot, all the rest of the horses are less at risk because we have less of the disease now floating around the barn.

So that will impact how quickly the quarantine can be or how long the quarantine is maintained and how we manage the other horses.

The availability of an isolated quarantine area can help things.

And we look at compliance with biosecurity and health monitoring.

So, we are gonna ask people to practice good hygiene in between horses if there's multiple horses on the premises.

We're going to ask there to be some, perhaps, limitations on who's coming and going.

And again, that will depend on this every individual situation.

And then we're going to ask for some health monitoring, most commonly taking temperatures twice a day so we can monitor that and use that as a guide to the presence, continued presence of disease and also to pick up on potentially sick horses earlier.

And then, as I said, movement of people, movement of equipment, movement of manure off the property, movement, you know, of anything that could be carrying the disease, the virus.

So we put all these things into consideration.

It doesn't change whether you will be quarantined or not necessarily, but it will change how we can help you manage it.

And that sort of leads into the epidemiological investigation that we do.

We wanna point out that the, we try not to let people feel or share blame.

As you might know, herpes viruses can remain dormant in an animal for a long time and certain stressors can just make it start affecting their health.

So we do see, we certainly see situations where horses have been coming and going and we suspect this horse picked it up where he was a week ago.

But we also have barns where horses just have not gone anywhere, there's not traffic in and out, and one horse just gets sick from it.

So we try not to place blame, but also in doing our investigation, we try to figure out where it could have come from, in part so that we can go back and see if anybody else is infected at another event or another facility, if a horse was traveling, and if the horse traveled after they might have come in contact with the disease.

So a horse that's traveling at horse shows one weekend to the next could pick up the virus, get to the next-door show and then start showing signs.

So we're gonna look at what we call trace forwards and trace backs.

Trace forward to where the animal that is affected might have gone and trace back to where he might have been.

And all those we look at so that we can try to help contain the disease.

We may not, our rules and regulations and all the good things we try to do and that you all try to do by being, you know, having good biosecurity and trying to, you know, maintain isolation in some cases, all those good things we are trying to help contain the disease because we can't always stop it.

No matter what we try to do, we can't necessarily stop the disease being present, but what we try very hard to do is contain it and prevent it from spreading.

And that's how I hope a lot of people in the industry look at this because it's, I realize it's really hard to take when we're quarantining a farm.

It can really cause a lot of emotional, economic, all sorts of problems and we appreciate that, but we also wanna help prevent those problems from spreading to other facilities, other people and other animals.

And that's really how we try to look at this.

So in the midst of all this, there's also communications where the Department of Agriculture will get involved.

We're always talking to the facility owner, we'll be talking to horse owners, the barn veterinarians.

We may speak to other veterinarians in the area, particularly if they are linked epidemiologically.

We do talk to, sometimes to the public.

We try to assist in rumor control.

Now, when we are doing these communications, we are very mindful of confidentiality.

We're very mindful about how rumors go and how reputations can be affected when there's a disease.

We do have, in the Department of Agriculture, a public outreach group who is very well attuned to that.

We've been getting a lot of practice in this with avian influenza.

If you heard about that going on, there's a lot of farms affected.

We work very hard about not conveying confidential information or information that is going to adversely affect the privacy of the barn owners.

So, we do try to communicate as needed to help spread, prevent spread of disease but not help spread rumor or gossip.

We try to do education.

Eventually, we will release a quarantine and now everyone will always wonder, my goodness, I'm being quarantined, how long is this going to last?

For the case of equine herpes virus, we may release a quarantine after 21 or 28 days, depending on whether we have new cases pop up in the barn or whether we're doing testing.

Sometimes we do or do not require testing, so it's kind of variable.

So we never set a date at the beginning because we never know how things are going to proceed as this, as the incident goes on.

But we're all, we're generally looking at 21 or 28 days without any new cases.

But this is, again, one of those times when we work with the horse owners and the facility owner and there's no way at the outset to give a specific bit of information, specific timing on that quarantine release.

But eventually we release the quarantine.

Are there, I wanted to use this as an example of how we get involved in a disease situation.

So I covered this in a bit more detail than I will the others, but this is kind of how we proceed when we hear about one of these reportable diseases and we have to go and determine, do we in fact just have a suspicion or do we have a diagnosis, do we need to institute a quarantine, how are we going to proceed with the quarantine and educate the horse owners and people involved in the facility and how we're going to proceed with the incident and monitoring and finally releasing the quarantine.

Are there any questions at the end of this block of information that we wanna talk about right now?

- [Danielle] I don't see any in the Q&A or chat.

Our audience can certainly type them in.

I would say if we wanna, if you wanna keep going, we'll monitor.

If we see a question come up, we'll let you know.

- Okay, I just thought I'd check.

I feel like I've been talking a long time.

- [Danielle] I appreciate the check-in.

- Okay.

Okay, let's go on.

Equine infectious anemia, EIA, and I always, when I think of EIA, I'm old enough to remember when, and some of you also might be, when the Coggins test was first developed for EIA.

And I was a little girl, crazy about horses, reading horse magazines and there were stories all the time, just heart wrenching stories.

And Mr. Leroy Coggins, nobody seemed to like him because he came up with this test to diagnose equine, euthanasia of horses, little girls' horses were getting euthanized and there were just really horrible stories and it was so sad and there were lots of diagnoses at the time because we didn't have, you know, the testing at that time to do.

Over the years, we've had the availability of the Coggins test and another test that we can do to diagnose it, and we've slowly, you know, and I don't know that we appreciate this.

But slowly over the years of testing, and certainly not every horse in the United States has been tested, but over the years testing a certain number of horses over time, we have reduced the cases of EIA considerably.

And so that's a case where there's been quite a success despite the fact that it was quite painful at the beginning, and it's certainly quite painful for any individual who still has a horse that tests positive for EIA.

This is a disease that's bloodborne.

It's primarily spread by biting insects.

It's carried on their little mouth pieces.

So, a fly that goes and it bites and gets blood from a horse and then the horse swishes at it and the fly goes to another horse.

If that blood with the virus is in that fly's little mouth parts, it can transfer it to the next horse that it's biting.

So, that's actually important because when we get into how we control this and if we institute a quarantine, we wanna keep that horse that's quarantined far enough away that a fly that bites him is not likely to get to another horse within close proximity.

So it's a bloodborne disease.

There's no treatment, there's no vaccine and the horse is infected for life.

Some horses are infected and never show signs of illness and some will show any one of these signs that we see here listed on the right.

Now we all know and it can be really frustrating that the Coggins test only reflects the disease status of the horse at the moment the sample is taken.

So that moment that we draw blood and run and submit it for testing is the only time that it's good for.

We have two tests that are available.

One is done quicker, but we have a number of higher false positives.

One takes longer but fewer false positives.

Generally both are used and are acceptable for travel or movement or when we're looking at, you know, if there's a requirement for a test.

So these Coggins tests have to be run, the blood is drawn by an actively accredited Pennsylvania authorized Category II vet and they have to send it to an authorized laboratory, a lab that's authorized to do the test.

Remember, all information must be accurate and the drawings or photographs must be clear and complete so your veterinarians, so that they can comply with all the regulations surrounding having Coggins tests done so that they can comply with that appropriately.

So, however you are doing this, you wanna make sure the horse or the photographs are done very clear so that all the markings and everything can be seen.

And it's important to realize, as I just mentioned about the tests and how long they can take and how there can be positives that very likely will be false positives, it's important to try to do them in a timely fashion.

Now I know we all come up with the last minute, oh, I need a Coggins test for this thing we're doing, but to the best that you can, try to plan ahead because.

Let me see.

Okay, I'm gonna go back.

Sorry. To here.

These tests, if we get a false, if we get a positive, that sample is submitted to the National Veterinary Lab for further testing, and that's gonna take a couple days.

So, even if we really think it's a false positive, we don't know until it's further tested.

So, try to get your testing done with that in mind, realizing almost never, that's gonna happen.

But we wouldn't want it to happen to you when you really urgently need the test done and it needs to be negative.

And I love this picture.

This was back from my practice days and one of my clients, when her Coggins was faxed back to her, it came in all these multiple eight and a half by 11 segments and she had to tape it together to get the whole thing.

And I joked with her that I thought that was a Texas size Coggins test because everything's bigger in Texas, from what I'm told.

So how does the Department of Agriculture get involved with these Coggins tests?

Movement of horses into Pennsylvania requires the horse be Coggins test negative within 12 months, and that has to be on the health certificate, it has to be recorded on there.

Now, as I was talking about before, that's a pretty generous timeframe, right.

You know, we say, well, the Coggins test is only good for the day it's drawn and that's absolutely true, but over time that we've done these and we've gotten enough horses tested and retested, regularly tested over the years, it all adds up and it has all helped over time to significantly reduce the number of EIA positive horses we have across the United States.

So, even though we recognize an every 12 month Coggins test is not going to pick up every horse that is getting EIA, we are going to pick them up over time and reduce numbers.

I believe every state is going to have, it has a requirement for a Coggins test and that should always be checked because every state may not be the same as Pennsylvania in terms of whether they allow a 12 month duration.

It may be within the calendar year, it may be a shorter duration.

So, that always has to be checked on before your horse travels.

And realize that private entities may have different regulation or requirements for a Coggins test than Pennsylvania.

So we don't tell a horse show or a boarding stable how they have to do it.

So if a boarding stable says, we want a Coggins test done within 30 days, then they can do that.

That's not a Pennsylvania requirement, that's the boarding stable's requirement.

When a horse tests, actually tests positive, and we do a retest with the National Veterinary Lab and it is, in fact, positive all the animals are, well, first, while we're waiting for the second result, all the animals are going to be quarantined temporarily until the second test is done.

And we're going to do that investigation like I discussed previously in the other disease.

We're going to test, ask about movement, exposure and history.

Once there is a confirmed positive, that it's been confirmed twice, we do not require euthanasia but that is always the individual's option if they can't comply with the quarantine, and that horse will end up with a lifetime quarantine at an approved location, and it needs to be 200 yards, I believe it is, from any other horse.

Again, that's related.

My understanding is it's related to flies and how they are able to transfer from one horse to another.

We'll check in on you a couple times of a year and the horse can have a buddy, but that horse will also, that buddy, if it's a horse, will also be quarantined along with him.

So the buddy can't travel. The buddy has to stay home, too.

And just briefly about rabies.

Rabies follows a similar line as the other diseases.

If a horse is exposed to a rabid, you know, an animal that tests positive for rabies or it's suspected or we're not sure, I had a place where a couple, at least one horse was bitten by a raccoon.

There was another horse in the barn.

We weren't sure, certainly, whether the other horse was bitten.

We weren't even sure, we couldn't even test the raccoon so we weren't sure it had rabies but it was a concern because it probably would not be common for a normal raccoon to bite a horse.

So both horses were quarantined.

They didn't go anywhere, but we considered them both exposed.

So if a horse is vaccinated against rabies and it's a current vaccine, it's not, you know, hasn't been like, overdue by a year or a couple years, then the horse does not need to be quarantined.

So if they're properly vaccinated, no quarantine.

If they are not vaccinated, they're quarantined to home for 120 days.

And that's to account for the incubation period from the time an animal gets bitten to a time where it can actually be sick and showing signs and contagious to other animals.

So like the other things, we'll post a quarantine, we check intermittently, and then we revoke the quarantine.

Of course, the horse that's actually diagnosed with rabies will trigger this investigation and we'll go back to where that horse came from.

Was it around other horses where it could have exposed or could there have been a similar source of the rabies in both animals?

So we'll go back and do that investigation.

There are other diseases that I'm not gonna cover really other than to say that they're reportable and monitored.

They will not necessarily trigger a quarantine or any action on our part, but we do monitor them.

For instance, if you've seen a certificate of veterinary inspection recently, you'll see that there's always a statement on that the horse hasn't come from a state that has had vesicular stomatitis or hasn't come from a state where we've seen piroplasmosis.

So we put those on the health certificates just as a confirmation that the horse has not been around or exposed to those diseases.

But we will, we are asking that we're notified so that we can keep track that these diseases are in the area or in the state.

So this gets into an important concept of animal disease traceability and certain licenses that we offer for these.

So, what we we are looking at is we wanna be able to trace animals.

As I mentioned in the epidemiology portion of the EHV discussion, we wanna be able to trace animals forward and back so that we can account for anywhere that horse might have been exposed to a disease to see if there's other animals back there that were exposed or who might have exposed this horse, and we wanna be able to look forward if this horse or other animal has gone somewhere where they could have exposed further animals or further horses.

So that's what we talk about when we talk about traceability and with the goal of containing the spread of disease.

And that basically involves identification of horses and good record keeping.

So what we do to try to do this is we have what we call the dealer/hauler license.

And the dealer/hauler license is for people who buy and sell horses or haul horses from one place to another.

Now, to help explain this a little better, I wanna say this does not include home breds.

So I've got a bunch of Shetland ponies and I was breeding them and I would sell, or actually, to be honest, give them away and I was not considered a dealer.

These were my home breds.

So if you are a breeder, you breed Quarter Horses and you sell them privately when they get, whatever, yearling, two-year-olds, you are not considered a dealer.

Those are your own horses and they're home breds.

It does not include people who buy and sell occasionally, like a, what might be typical.

You buy a horse, you ride it, you train it, you show it for a couple years, or you've ridden it and had it for a bunch of years as a trail riding horse and you're ready to move on and you wanna sell that horse.

It does not encompass that.

That's, we consider a private sale.

It's not considered a dealer.

Or you transport your own animals.

You take your horses to a horse show, you take your horses to go on a trail ride.

That is not considered a hauler.

So a dealer/hauler, we're thinking about someone who buys a horse, say at a sale, and sells it at another sale a couple weeks later or even sells it privately very quickly.

Their job is to turn horses over quickly.

A hauler who maybe takes horses for pay, this is their job, they haul horses to horse shows.

They have nothing to do with your stable, they have nothing to do with you other than they're hauling the horse around and you're paying them to do so.

Those are the kind of people that will come under this licensing requirement.

And what these people, what people have to do when they have a dealer/hauler license is they have to be able to identify the horses that they're transporting, whatever way that's available, either by mark, you know, name, name and owner, markings, breed, age, that kind of thing, and they have to keep good records.

They have to keep records of where the horse came from and where the horse went to.

And this goes back to that traceability.

If we have a disease that we're following, we wanna know movements, we wanna know where horses are coming and going.

The horse was at an event and that event ended up having a number of horses with EHV.

We wanna know how those horses got there, where they went to, and sometimes the best way to trace that is from the person who's moving the horses around.

I hope that's, I hope that is clear.

Auctions. Auctions and sales markets, they fall under this dealer/hauler license because they are intermediaries so we ask them to keep records identifying animals and records of where they came from and where they went to.

So, record keeping and then depending on the situation, we'll do inspections on the cleanliness of the trailers that are hauling animals.

We'll do inspections of the cleanliness of holding areas so if a dealer picks up a horse, takes them to their farm for a while and then moves them on, we'll look at the cleanliness of those holding pens.

I'm getting close, boy, I'm taking a little longer than I expected.

I'm gonna try to move on because I wanna cover everything.

We also regulate people who are hauling dead animals just in the exact same manner.

We have a dead animal hauling license and for places that are actually taking care of dead animals, so crematoriums and composting businesses, we license them also.

And just, this is really important because this is another place where you may bump up against the Department of Agriculture, is dead animal disposal.

And we do actually have a regulation about disposing of dead animals, and that requires that they be properly disposed of within 48 hours.

And that involves burial, incineration, composting or rendering are proper disposal methods.

And sometimes we get complaints.

That's the most common reason we might come and visit if we have a concern about whether a dead animal is properly disposed of.

Normally, we give people 48 hours to do that.

Again, we are trying to help you comply with the regulations and so we can come, we can see the problem or the concern and explain the, explain how we need you to properly dispose of the animal.

The Department of Agriculture is involved with health certificates or certificates of veterinary inspection.

Any horse coming into Pennsylvania has to have a CVI done within 30 days of movement.

Again, why is that?

We all know a horse can have their inspection for their health certificate done today and be sick tomorrow.

We hope that people are aware of that and considerate of that with regards to whether they proceed with their movement if an animal becomes sick in the interim, but what we certainly hope to do is catch enough problems before something happens, before a horse is moved.

It's an opportunity for the veterinarian to get on the farm and hopefully prevent a movement of a horse which could make other horses sick.

And same as a Coggins test, a CVI, private entity may require something different than what the state requires.

And again, it has to be a accredited, licensed veterinarian who looks at the horse and writes a CVI.

So, key points of what I hopefully have conveyed.

The Department of Agriculture regulates some aspects of equine health and movement and the goal is to protect further spread of disease.

And if we can, protect the disease from happening at all.

We work best when we collaborate, and this is really important.

We try hard to collaborate and not come in as a sheriff, but we wanna collaborate with veterinarians, horse owners and laboratories.

Regulations change and new diseases can get added to that list that I showed you at the beginning, so it's just something to be aware of.

Something can change if a disease changes in importance or prevalence.

Biosecurity are things that we talk about all the time and we can certainly help you with that just as your veterinarian can help you with that, to help you as an individual prevent the spread of disease or getting disease into your farm.

We are always help, always interested in talking about that or any other topics.

And I just wanna touch briefly on horse racing because a lot of people don't realize how intimately the Department of Agriculture is involved in horse racing.

We have a state horse racing commission that's broken down into the Bureau of Standardbred Racing and a Bureau of Thoroughbred Racing, and they oversee the integrity of the sport in Pennsylvania.

And there's a whole slew of people who are, who work for the Department of Agriculture and are in place either in Harrisburg, at headquarters, or physically on the race tracks that do all sorts of things involving horse racing.

We have our executives, we have enforcement and licensing division, veterinarians who are employed at the tracks by the Department of Agriculture.

We have office managers, livestock workers, clerical staff, investigators, stewards, and we are also involved with the Equine Toxicology and Research Lab, which is very well known and respected for testing biological samples, to test for materials or drugs that are in the horse's system.

So racing commission staff at the track are involved in observation of the horses at race time, mornings of races.

They do pre-race inspections.

Staff that are involved in obtaining biological samples to test for prohibited substances.

Staff that investigate activities.

Staff, the stewards and judges who can make rulings that result in purse forfeiture, fines or suspensions.

And every person on the racetrack, not observers, but every person who has business on the racetrack has a license through us, and that's all with the Department of Agriculture, and a lot of people aren't aware of how much agriculture, the Department of Ag is involved in horse racing.

This is titled "Pregnant Mare at Sunset in Iceland," and I think it's pretty clear she's pregnant.

And this is the regional map, and there is a link that I included that I believe is in the chat, that shows and you can determine what region you're in and the link will also take you to a similar map and links within there to phone calls and email addresses to call.

So this is Region 7, the southeast portion that I'm in.

And you see they go across the top and back here, four, five, six, seven.

So, that's how our regions are laid out.

And I believe that's it.

I went a little bit over, but hopefully-- - That's okay.

We have time for questions, so that's great.

So thank you for all that wonderful information.

We have put, let's see, I don't know if we got all of your links in the chat.

I see Bethany's, yep, Bethany has added the links from that, Nancy has mentioned into the chat so feel free to click on those to explore later.

We are happy to entertain any questions right now, so if you want to use the Q&A box to add those questions, please do so.

And then Laura just put in a link for the evaluation.

So, while you're listening into questions here or asking questions yourself, if you could just take two, three minutes to fill that out, that would be appreciated.

- I can tell you that the one link, the general Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture link has a search bar and it actually is really good.

You know, sometimes these aren't so good, but the search bar is really good and I even go to it a lot of times to find stuff that I'm looking for.

So if you were to type in there "dealer/hauler license," it will take you right to our dealer/hauler page or rabies, it'll take you right to there.

So that actually works quite well.

- [Danielle] Great.

- And then I put a link in for the dealer/hauler license and a link for, oh, a link that shows the import requirements for all species.

And the horse one is really nice.

It's only one page, it's a really, we have a very short list of requirements for importing horses into Pennsylvania.

It's basically the CVI, the Coggins test, I think a note about piroplasmosis and VS.

So horses get off a little bit easier in Pennsylvania than other species.

(laughing)

- We'll still wait another few minutes to see if there's questions.

I guess I have a question.

So what are the most frequent issues that you deal with on a day-to-day basis?

- You know, we actually, one of the reasons I wanted to do this talk is because we don't deal with horses a lot.

We are certainly prepared to, and we do work, deal with horses, but when I was in practice, I never thought about the Department of Agriculture other than submitting my CVIs.

So horse people don't bump up against us that often, but this is why I thought it was important that you know what we're here for and what we do so that hopefully it can be a positive experience if you do bump up against us, or you know that you can reach out to us and we're not too scary, I don't think, and we can help you with questions or problems, or direct you maybe to where you need to go.

The things that I deal with the most on a regular basis is rabies because we cover all species with regards to rabies.

So, I deal weekly with one or more rabies investigations where an animal has been, a pet or a livestock has been exposed to an animal with rabies.

And raccoons, bats, recently a lot of ground hogs that we have tested for rabies.

So we do a lot of rabies work.

Right now, we are in the middle of avian influenza.

So I do a lot of, myself, I do a lot of routine poultry work, but right now, we're all doing a lot of poultry work with avian influenza.

So we are intimately, exhaustively involved in that, if you're reading about that right now in the news.

I do a lot of deer inspections.

We highly regulate farmed deer.

So one of the things I do a lot of is farm deer inspections and work with those farmers.

So, and there's plenty of other things, dealer/haulers, we, that includes anyone who's hauling cattle, sheep, goats, horses, exotic sheep, exotic goats.

It's actually a real, this, I tell people this is a little bit of my dream job because it's kind of fun being able to learn as well as meet a lot of different people and what they do.

- Sure, sure.

I have another question for you.

So you mentioned it was EHV-1, EIA and rabies as the reportable diseases.

What about like, West Nile and eastern and western encephalitis?

Those aren't reportable but like, you know, I see sometimes especially on the, you know, the human side if there's been cases.

So how does that get out if there's been cases of West Nile in our horses, or is there not yet a way for that to happen?

- Well, I, it is technically listed as a reportable disease.

- [Danielle] Okay.

- How often is it actually getting reported?

I can't tell you.

- [Danielle] Okay.

- We don't take action on it.

So we're not gonna quarantine a farm for West Nile.

I honestly don't know what the Department of Agriculture was doing back when West Nile first popped onto the scene.

I was actually at Penn State then.

There may have been initially some quarantines.

I don't really know, but I know that there was some excitement about it and we got involved in trying to, probably doing some of the epidemiology and such.

But right now, we would not quarantine a farm.

But I know that we wanna know about these cases, just like strangles.

I know how much strangles is out there in private practice and I know it's not getting reported, but it is technically reportable.

Again-- - Yeah, I just think of these, you know, mosquito born diseases that we, you know, again that are also the ones, some of them humans can get too, so it's, I guess kinda, at least in my sense, maybe not everyone cares.

So like, you know, what is this, you know, are we having a bad case this summer?

Are things okay? You know, you know, reminders to have your horses, you know, boosted or vaccinated if they're not, so.

- Right.

We, again, I know that they're reportable but I can't tell you whether it's being reported all the time.

If we were to learn about it, I know that we would have a discussion with the vet, likely the veterinarian, about probably biosecurity, exposure of other horses.

If it is a zoonotic disease, recommendation, we always send people to the local or State Department of Health if that's a concern.

So I just don't, you know, fortunately, the disease isn't around that much, but I don't know how often it's being reported, particularly if it's a suspicion as opposed to a diagnosis.

- I see an attendee has a hand raised.

Elizabeth, I'm wondering if you can type either your comment or your question into the chat or Q&A if there is something.

And so we don't have mics enabled for our participants or attendees, so we'll give that a second to see if there's something to be added in there.

This is all excellent information, so it's good, we were saying on our team, even for us to, you know, keep track of all the regulations and rules and things like that.

It can be a lot sometimes.

- And we are always, I'm just one of many domestic animal health inspectors.

I think we're all pretty nice people, if I do say so myself.

And we are always happy to answer questions and help.

I mean, there's no getting around that we have to do certain things because we have to abide by the regulations.

But again, our goal, it makes it easier on everybody, us and you, if everybody's complying, if everybody's doing the best of their ability to do the right thing.

It's so much easier on everybody.

- Yes.

All right, well, I think we're gonna go ahead and wrap it up then.

I don't see any more questions come through.

I do see comments that this is a very nice and informative webinar, so thank you.

Oh, yes. Okay.

Elizabeth mentioned the EDCC.

Yes. So for those and maybe either Laura or Bethany could throw that link in here because I know our team, I'm certainly signed up for email notifications from the EDCC.

That is another way to track very certain diseases.

It's got an interactive map so you can search by state.

It can show you the cases.

You know, it'll show you, especially in terms of quarantine, if the quarantine is currently ongoing or if it's been resolved.

It is a useful tool to have.

And I don't know, Nancy, if you wanna add anything on top of that about the EDCC website.

And Laura has just shared the link in the chat.

- Yeah, that's a really good website, too.

That's a really good resource and you can, as you mentioned, you can search on that list, for that list of reportable and actionable or just reportable diseases for each state, so.

- Yep. So yeah, so it's good to have multiple ways to learn of this information, right.

So, good to have all these tools in your tool bag.

So, perfect.

Well, we're right on the hour, so that was actually excellent timing all around.

So thank you again to our attendees.

Please, again, one last request to fill out the evaluation.

As we said, this was recorded, so we will get this posted on the Penn State website soon for you to watch later.

And thank you very much, Nancy, for this wonderful talk, and like I said, lots of great information here today.

- Thank you.

Well, thank you for letting me do this.

I really enjoyed myself.

I appreciate it.

Thank you for coming, everybody.