It never seems quite fair when “something” happens that doesn’t directly involve you, but ends up affecting you. Vesicular stomatitis did that to many horse people in the last two years. Restrictions on movement of horses caused problems for people who had not been within 100 miles of an infected horse. It caused problems for some people who didn’t live within hundreds of miles of an infected state!

In the most recent scenario, the culprit is CEM (contagious equine metritis), the problem is possible state, federal, and international travel and breeding restrictions, and the clincher is that it affects all of us.

But, that is only looking at it from the short-term perspective. CEM has caused serious problems in various parts of the world, including the United States, in the past 20 years, and it could be a problem again if we don’t continue to be vigilant (see article on page 35). Prevention, in this case especially, is much better than cure.

Briefly, CEM is a highly contagious venereal disease that can affect all equids (horses, donkeys, mules, etc.) caused by the bacterium Taylorella equigenitalis. The infection can result in short-term infertility in mares that is sometimes associated with a vaginal discharge and rarely abortion. Foals born to mares with CEM can become infected while in the uterus (unusual in equines) or during parturition (birth). Mares can be inapparent carriers of the bacterium in their reproductive tracts, meaning they can appear perfectly normal, yet they shed the organism into their environment and transmit it through breeding