Horses are worthy of care: Horse sector participants' attitudes towards animal sentience, welfare, and well-being.

Organisations for which sentient animals are central to the business model need to demonstrate the safeguarding of animal welfare and well-being. This requires providing positive experiences for animals which is critical to maintaining the social licence to operate. A cross-sectional survey captured the attitudes of experienced horse sector participants regarding sentience, welfare and well-being.

Horse Sector Participants' Attitudes towards Anthropomorphism and Animal Welfare and Wellbeing.

Anthropomorphizing can misinform the making of inferences about animal mental experiences. This is a consideration when implementing the Five Domains Model for animal welfare assessment. An online survey run in 2021 captured horse sector participants' perspectives about anthropomorphism and wellbeing in relation to horses.

'I want to be the sort of owner that he wants me to be': Rationales for biosecurity implementation among British horse owners.

Background: Horse owners play a critical role in mitigating the risk of pathogen spread between horses. However, little is known about how they view biosecurity and whether they experience barriers to the uptake of preventive measures.

Objectives: To explore horse owners' attitudes, perceptions, and experiences of biosecurity and identify how these factors shape horse owners' decisions for biosecurity implementation.

Surveillance of strangles in UK horses between 2015 and 2019 based on laboratory detection of Streptococcus equi.

Background: Previously national surveillance data for monitoring strangles (Streptococcus equi infection) in UK horses was limited. Improved awareness and knowledge of positive diagnoses would permit the optimisation of biosecurity protocols, decreasing the prevalence of strangles.

Methods: Seven UK laboratories reported positive strangles diagnoses between 1 January 2015 and 31 December 2019 based on identifying Streptococcus equi via agent detection assays from field-based practitioner-submitted samples.

Challenges to exotic disease preparedness in Great Britain: The frontline veterinarian's perspective.

Background: Exotic diseases pose a significant risk to horse health and welfare. Several stakeholder groups, including primary care veterinarians, share responsibility for maintaining freedom from pathogens that cause exotic diseases. However, little is known about the current state of exotic disease preparedness within the British horse industry.

Preliminary insight into horse owners' perceptions of, and attitudes towards, exotic diseases in the United Kingdom.

Background: The potential for an exotic disease incursion is a significant concern for the United Kingdom (UK) equine industry. Horse owners' perceptions of, and attitudes towards, exotic diseases can influence decisions to adopt disease preparedness strategies. The objectives of this study were to describe horse owners' 1) perceptions of the term 'exotic disease', and 2) attitudes towards their risk of being affected by an exotic disease.

A cross-sectional study of horse owners' awareness and perceived risk of exotic diseases in the United Kingdom.

The international nature of the equine industry provides opportunities for the spread of infectious diseases between countries. While incursions of exotic diseases into the United Kingdom (UK) equine population have been rare, the potential socioeconomic and welfare impacts are a significant concern. However, little is known about leisure horse owners' ability or willingness to prepare for an exotic disease incursion.

PinR mediates the generation of reversible population diversity in Streptococcus zooepidemicus.

Opportunistic pathogens must adapt to and survive in a wide range of complex ecosystems. Streptococcus zooepidemicus is an opportunistic pathogen of horses and many other animals, including humans. The assembly of different surface architecture phenotypes from one genotype is likely to be crucial to the successful exploitation of such an opportunistic lifestyle.

Vaccination with a live multi-gene deletion strain protects horses against virulent challenge with Streptococcus equi.

Strangles, caused by Streptococcus equi subspecies equi (S. equi) is one of the most frequently diagnosed infectious diseases of horses and there remains a significant need to develop new preventative vaccines. We generated a live vaccine strain of S.

Experimental infection with equine herpesvirus type 1 (EHV-1) induces chorioretinal lesions.

Equine herpesvirus myeloencephalitis (EHM) remains one of the most devastating manifestations of equine herpesvirus type 1 (EHV-1) infection but our understanding of its pathogenesis remains rudimentary, partly because of a lack of adequate experimental models. EHV-1 infection of the ocular vasculature may offer an alternative model as EHV-1-induced chorioretinopathy appears to occur in a significant number of horses, and the pathogenesis of EHM and ocular EHV-1 may be similar. To investigate the potential of ocular EHV-1 as a model for EHM, and to determine the frequency of ocular EHV-1, our goal was to study: (1) Dissemination of virus following acute infection, (2) Development and frequency of ocular lesions following infection, and (3) Utility of a GFP-expressing virus for localization of the virus in vivo.

From glanders to Hendra virus: 125 years of equine infectious diseases.

Josh Slater looks back at the past 125 years of developments in equine infectious disease, including landmark discoveries in microbiology and genomics, and considers what the future may hold.

Ensuring equine biosecurity at London 2012.

The London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Equestrian Games were the highest profile event in the 2012 equestrian calendar and were the culmination of four years of detailed and meticulous biosecurity planning to ensure that all horses arrived, competed and returned home safely and in good health. Josh Slater, Anthony Greenleaves and Andy Paterson describe how this was achieved.

The cell envelope subtilisin-like proteinase is a virulence determinant for Streptococcus suis.

Background: Streptococcus suis is a major swine pathogen and zoonotic agent that mainly causes septicemia, meningitis, and endocarditis. It has recently been suggested that proteinases produced by S. suis (serotype 2) are potential virulence determinants.

Rapid evolution of virulence and drug resistance in the emerging zoonotic pathogen Streptococcus suis.

Background: Streptococcus suis is a zoonotic pathogen that infects pigs and can occasionally cause serious infections in humans. S. suis infections occur sporadically in human Europe and North America, but a recent major outbreak has been described in China with high levels of mortality.

New putative virulence factors of Streptococcus suis involved in invasion of porcine brain microvascular endothelial cells.

Streptococcus suis serotype 2 is an important pathogen causing a wide range of infections in swine, the most important being meningitis. Few virulence factors have been identified and the pathogenesis of infection is not well understood. Recently, we demonstrated the ability of S.

Mutation of the maturase lipoprotein attenuates the virulence of Streptococcus equi to a greater extent than does loss of general lipoprotein lipidation.

Streptococcus equi is the causative agent of strangles, a prevalent and highly contagious disease of horses. Despite the animal suffering and economic burden associated with strangles, little is known about the molecular basis of S. equi virulence.

Invasive disease and toxic shock due to zoonotic Streptococcus suis: an emerging infection in the East?

Sriskandan and Slater discuss the implications of Tang and colleagues' report of the largest known zoonotic outbreak of which occurred in Sichuan Province, China, in 2005.

Development of an in vivo Himar1 transposon mutagenesis system for use in Streptococcus equi subsp. equi.

Streptococcus equi subsp. equi is the causative agent of the equine disease strangles. In this study we describe the development of an in vivo Himar1 transposon system for the random mutagenesis of S.