Irish equine lab races ahead

Ireland’s Equine Flu Centre is now one of four world reference centres – due in part to one of its researchers

BACK in 2007 Ireland’s bloodstock industry found itself in serious difficulty when the Australian authorities pointed the finger at Irish horses for an outbreak of equine flu in their country.

The Australians had identified the strain of flu as being Wisconsin 2003 type and media reports said it had been brought into the New South Wales area by Irish stallions.

Fortunately for Ireland and the bloodstock industry here, the Irish Equine Centre, through Prof Ann Cullinane – head of virology at the Johnstown, Co Kildare, centre – was able to show this was not the case.

Cullinane told authorities there that this strain of flu had not been seen in Ireland in records going back at least 20 years and she produced the evidence to back up her case – and that of Ireland.

The Australians then had to go back to their own investigation and eventually backed down having conceded the disease had been imported.

The swiftness with which the centre was able to bring forward the necessary information – and its accuracy – was not lost on the international scientific community and its recognition duly arrived.

Late last year the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), which is headquartered in Paris, named the Johnstown facility as one of only four equine flu reference laboratories in the world.

It joined laboratories in Britain, Germany and North America on the OIE list and in doing so became the first laboratory in Ireland to be given this responsibility for animal disease reference in Ireland.

Cullinane is justifiably proud of that achievement which she said was given in recognition of the years of work put in by the centre in the surveillance and management of the disease in horses here.

She says this had meant the laboratory had been able to bring forward the information on all the strains of the disease found here which ruled out the Irish horses as the source of the outbreak in New South Wales.

She explains the centre, near Naas, had been set up originally with funding from the industry itself to provide laboratory services on diseases in horses, but it had evolved since the mid 1980s.

“We received a major funding boost for research and development through funding provided in the National Development Plan and this allowed us get the equipment we needed for the work we do,” she says.

Now, as a global reference laboratory for the 175-member OIE, which monitors 100 animal diseases worldwide, that work is even more important and the professor is also a member of the international surveillance committee of the organisation which meets annually .

Cullinane explains while equine influenza seldom kills horses, it leads to the cancellation of events and this has cost millions of dollars in lost revenue to countries where there have been outbreaks.

An outbreak in Hong Kong cost the authorities an estimated $1 billion (€714 million) in betting revenues and the Australian’s lost hundreds of millions of dollars because of the outbreak of flu there.

The recognition of the centre’s excellence on the disease has led to increased activity there with samples being sent from around the globe for identification. Cullinane says the centre hopes to twin with an Asian centre to assist the fight against the disease there.

While continuing to service the needs of the 600 Irish vets using the centre, it also carries out vital surveillance work on the disease and has extended its research into the spread of the disease to the greyhound population.

In recent times because of the discovery the disease can cross from horses to dogs the centre has been testing for the equine flu organism in the greyhound population but as yet, it has not been identified here.

Ireland, she says, controls the disease by vaccination and about 30 per cent of Irish horses are vaccinated against the disease. Other countries, like Australia, chose to attempt to eradicate it.

Cullinan has just returned from an international conference in Florida where the scientists were discussing a harmonisation of the very sensitive PCR test used to detect diseases.

Meanwhile the work of controlling equine flu and protecting the high health status of the Irish bloodstock industry will continue, she adds.