“The advancement of animal ID is currently one of the NIAA’s greatest missions,” began Amelita Facchiano, consultant for GlobalVetLink and chair of the National Institute of Animal Agriculture (NIAA) Equine ID Subcommittee at the NIAA annual conference held April 3-7 in St. Paul, Minn. After discussing different forms of equine identification currently available, the NIAA Equine ID Subcommittee concluded that microchips should be made the required form of equine identification to best provide for disease tracking for National Animal Identification System (NAIS) purposes.

Amy Mann, director of health and regulatory affairs for the American Horse Council and vice chair of the NIAA Equine Health Committee, said, “The NAIS intended to establish a standardized, alpha-numeric system for animal identification. The purpose of such a system is to permit ‘trace back’ within 48 hours of a confirmed diagnosis of an animal disease.”

It is a misconception that there are no equine diseases of significance that require tracking, said Mann. Occurrences of vesicular stomatitis (VS) in the western United States in 2004 might have been controlled better if there had been a tracking system in place. More recently, several problems with neurologic equine herpesvirus type-1 could have been contained more thoroughly. Both situations prove the need to track animal movement to better prevent the spread of sometimes deadly infectious diseases.

Mann said an equine identification system would involve an identification number for each premises involved, a number for each horse that is part of the system, and a location, time, and date stamp of where horses are so they could be traced in the event of a major disease outbreak