Reading Time: 3 minutes Treating horses like pets restricts healthy movement and activity, critical social interaction in a herd, leads to unnatural feeding strategies and practices and can seriously impact a horse's health and well-being.

Your horse is not your pet
Horses have different care, handling and housing needs compared to other companion species like dogs or cats

Farm connections flagged in U.S. dairy bird flu spread
Shared equipment, workers may play roles in interstate spread
Reading Time: 3 minutes USDA investigation into U.S. bird flu in dairy cows suggests shared equipment and shared workers may have helped HPAI cross state lines.

Biosecurity bill draws questions from Senate ag committee
Some senators said the bill should cover everyone who enters a livestock operation because anyone can pose a biosecurity threat
Senate scrutiny has begun on Bill C-275, the private member's bill to amend the Health of Animals Act, which would increase fines for those who unlawfully enter livestock barns and processing facilities.

Healthy foals need healthy brood mares
Foal well-being starts with a focus on the dam
Reading Time: 3 minutes While significant attention is directed towards the health of foals themselves, understanding the factors contributing to the welfare of the brood mare is equally, if not more, important for development of well-balanced, healthy young horses.

Anti-activist bill back before Commons committee
Bill adds protections for biosecurity, farmers' mental health, Barlow says
A bill to create harsher penalties for unlawful entry onto farms and biosecure zones is back before the House of Commons after a previous iteration died on the order table in 2021. Conservative MP John Barlow brought forward Bill C-275, “an Act to amend the Health of Animals Act (biosecurity on farms),” as a private […] Read more

Vietnam approves commercial use of first African swine fever vaccines
U.S. Agriculture Secretary says farmers may purchase as precaution despite no domestic cases
Hanoi | Reuters – Vietnam has approved the domestic commercial use of two home-grown vaccines against African swine fever, the government said on Monday, making them the world’s first commercial vaccines against the deadly disease. The vaccines include NAVET-ASFVAC, co-developed by Navetco Central Veterinary Medicine and scientists from the United States, and AVAC ASF LIVE […] Read more

Learn to manage disease threats in livestock
Reading Time: < 1 minute The Animal Health Emergency Management project and its industry partners are offering a series of workshops on emergency responses to animal diseases. The three-part workshop series are based on handbooks created by the organization on topics such as “Emergency Management 101” and proactive disease management. “The one-hour sessions progressively build out important animal disease management […] Read more

Livestock affected by wildfire smoke, too
Reading Time: < 1 minute The extensive smoke from this year’s wildfires has prompted the American Veterinary Medical Association to put out an advisory for pets and livestock. “If you can see or feel the effects of smoke yourself, you also should take precautions to keep your animals — both pets and livestock — safe.” It urges animal owners to […] Read more

Second activist investor buys into Elanco
Reuters — Hedge fund Starboard Value LP has taken a stake in Elanco Animal Health and nominated three directors to the animal healthcare company’s board, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. The WSJ report did not mention the size of Starboard’s stake in Elanco, which makes treatments for pets […] Read more

The interconnections between species are deep and interwoven
COVID-19 has put bats into the spotlight, and research shows how deeply everything is connected
Reading Time: 3 minutes In the last column I introduced the concept of systems change for the benefit of human and animal health. Fortunately, there is an avenue to work with human and animal doctors, scientists and experts towards a healthy world and it is called One Health. One Health is defined as a “collaborative, multi-sectoral and transdisciplinary approach […] Read more