US horses killed by commercial feed

[ycbm]

I sincerely hope that UK and European manufacturers have safer production controls than the manufacturers of alfalfa pellets that are known to have killed more than 40 horses so far with botulism from processing a dead animal.

https://www.horseandhound.co.uk/news/horse-feed-equine-botulism-deaths-813770

 

[Griffin]

That is just so awful. You should be able to trust that your feed is safe. I really feel for those poor horses and their owners.

 

[ycbm]

I'm really shocked, I'm hoping someone from a UK manufacturer can tell us it couldn't happen here. I've never been so grateful that I feed straights at the moment, but I have given mine graas nuts this week to get him to eat psyllium and it doesn't bear thinking about that a feed company could process, what, a rabbit?, in their grass or alfalfa pellets.
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[J&S]

Wasn't mad cow disease something to do with dead stock in the feed?

 

[fidleyspromise]

That is scary and so sad for those horses and their owners.

 

[Michen]

Literally awful. And the weird thing is it isn’t all over my fb news feed on all the Colorado horse groups I’m part of.

 

[Goldenstar]

I think it will have got in from soil not a dead animal .
It’s naturally occurring in soils but when the spores get into a closed environment like wrapped feed it can quickly reproduce with disastrous results.
There was an outbreak in the Uk a few years back caused by big bale haylege .

 

[ycbm]

The article says they have identified dead animal remains in a previously unopened sack.

 

[ycbm]

Wasn't mad cow disease something to do with dead stock in the feed?

Yes but that was deliberate, using meat and bone meal in cow food.
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[ester]

and wasn't anything to do with bacteria.

There was the haylage incident with botulism here on a yard supplied batch just last year no? edit yes was last year, 18
https://www.fwi.co.uk/livestock/danger-of-contaminated-haylage-raised-after-18-horses-die

It's a lot more likely to be a dead animal, than soil spores causing it. (Ester with a PhD in a different type of Clostridia but )

 

[Squeak]

That is absolutely terrible. You’d really hope that something like that wouldn’t have been able to happen from a feed.

 

[ester]

I should add, the issue with haylage is that it is an environment where spores can germinate and vegetative growth and toxin production can occur.

But as stated in the article in this case it's more likely that the toxin itself was pacakged as I'd expect the product to be too dry to generate growth even if the packaging produces an anaerobic environment.

 

[ycbm]

I should add, the issue with haylage is that it is an environment where spores can germinate and vegetative growth and toxin production can occur.

But as stated in the article in this case it's more likely that the toxin itself was pacakged as I'd expect the product to be too dry to generate growth even if the packaging produces an anaerobic environment.

That's the shock for me Ester, the risks of baled forage are well known, but I always assumed the process of cooking cubes would kill anything in it.
.

 

[criso]

I once found a dried up mouse in a small bale of haylage from a very reputable brand. Didn't find it till Frankie had eaten all the haylage and left it in the net.

 

[ester]

'cooking' doesn't destroy the toxin, which is why clostrida toxins are a food safety risk too.

 

[Red-1]

Terrible. My horse has Hi Fi molasses free. It has alfalfa pellets in. I can't imagine the shock of finding specialist bought in feed had killed my horse.

 

[suestowford]

I once found a dried up mouse in a small bale of haylage from a very reputable brand. Didn't find it till Frankie had eaten all the haylage and left it in the net.

I have also found remains in haylage. Only it was half a mouse and I never found the other half...

 

[ester]

ycbm just a general re. 'cooking' it is also complicated by the fact that heat shock can trigger germination of clostridia spores so then they become vegetative and toxin producing if you provide them with a suitable environment after the germination. Suitable environment varying a lot- mine came from the antarctic ?
I'll stop geeking now ?

 

[Ratface]

I once found an unexploded bullet in a big round bale of hay. It had been cut from an area previously used for gunnery practice by the Royal Navy . . .
I left that yard shortly afterwards. It was just one of the reasons I did so.

 

[ycbm]

ycbm just a general re. 'cooking' it is also complicated by the fact that heat shock can trigger germination of clostridia spores so then they become vegetative and toxin producing if you provide them with a suitable environment after the germination. Suitable environment varying a lot- mine came from the antarctic ?
I'll stop geeking now ?

This stuff is really interesting, don't apologise.

Is there any commercially viable test feed manufacturers can use to batch test a horse feed, do you know? I believe botulism doesn't smell and has no taste.
.

 

[ester]

I think the main problem would be the sample processing/how much you'd have to test to be representative compared to say typical human digestion amounts (there are immunoassays to detect the toxins but I think gold standard is still to give it to a mouse) . Im not aware of anything commercially available for that sort of scale - but obviously most research/commercial options are human centric in this instance.

 

[Keith_Beef]

'cooking' doesn't destroy the toxin, which is why clostrida toxins are a food safety risk too.

Which is also, I think, why botulin can be present in canned foods.

 

[shortstuff99]

and wasn't anything to do with bacteria.

There was the haylage incident with botulism here on a yard supplied batch just last year no? edit yes was last year, 18
https://www.fwi.co.uk/livestock/danger-of-contaminated-haylage-raised-after-18-horses-die

It's a lot more likely to be a dead animal, than soil spores causing it. (Ester with a PhD in a different type of Clostridia but )

If you want a random fact, there is an island in maritime Antarctica called Prion Island. One day one of the scientists who discovered prions came on an Antarctic scientific cruise and demanded they stop at prion Island, despite us saying it had nothing to do with prions.

Not convinced, landed, disappointed to find a bare rock with a few angry penguins and no prions ?‍

 

[Cortez]

I lost a foal to botulism, it was in the soil. Not a nice way to die.

ETA - this was in the US.

 

[chaps89]

I once found an unexploded bullet in a big round bale of hay. It had been cut from an area previously used for gunnery practice by the Royal Navy . . .
I left that yard shortly afterwards. It was just one of the reasons I did so.

?

 

[onemoretime]

This stuff is really interesting, don't apologise.

Is there any commercially viable test feed manufacturers can use to batch test a horse feed, do you know? I believe botulism doesn't smell and has no taste.
.

In 2014 I had a young horse very ill with E Coli poisoning, we were abroad at the time it happened and friends were looking after him. Friend had just opened a new tub of his supplement and I was sure it was caused by this. I rang Top Spec although it was not a TS supplement, and asked where they had their feeds tested and they gave me details of a laboratory where I sent a sample of the supplement off to. It came back negative. The vets said they were certain that there had been a trauma to the gut by eating something sharp so we put it down to eating the hawthorn hedge. It had pierced the gut wall and let his own E Coli from his gut into his blood stream. We lost the horse after 4 weeks hospitalisation and 10.5k vet bills!

 

[onemoretime]

I lost a foal to botulism, it was in the soil. Not a nice way to die.

ETA - this was in the US.

A vet at our clinic told me that they thought Grass Sickness was a botulism strain but is trials it didn't work out.

 

[Nicnac]

I listened to a fascinating interview on Radio 4 last week with an Irish professor Christopher Elliott who ran/runs the Institute for Global Food Security at Queens in Belfast and who headed up the inquiry into the horsemeat scandal. Who knew that a lot of our dried spices are cut with other green leaves - Basil with chopped up olive or strawberry leaves - to make it go further and increase profitibility?

Many of the studies by the IGFS focuses on animal feeds. They've done and still do some very interesting studies https://www.qub.ac.uk/Research/GRI/TheInstituteforGlobalFoodSecurity/

Awful for the owners of those horses who have died in the US. We are at the mercy of so many with our beloved animals when it comes to trying to do our best by them and being failed by industry.

 

[Lexi 123]

The problem with the equine world is feed/ supplement companies can put anything in a bag as it not regulated .

 

[ester]

I listened to a fascinating interview on Radio 4 last week with an Irish professor Christopher Elliott who ran/runs the Institute for Global Food Security at Queens in Belfast and who headed up
the inquiry into the horsemeat scandal. Who knew that a lot of our dried spices are cut with other green leaves - Basil with chopped up olive or strawberry leaves - to make it go further and increase profitibility?

Many of the studies by the IGFS focuses on animal feeds. They've done and still do some very interesting studies https://www.qub.ac.uk/Research/GRI/TheInstituteforGlobalFoodSecurity/

Awful for the owners of those horses who have died in the US. We are at the mercy of so many with our beloved animals when it comes to trying to do our best by them and being failed by industry.

It was a great interview, I need to listen to the second half! I particularly liked when she asked how he'd studied and worked with 2 young children and he at least thanked his wife for that bit ?.