Wyoming Politician Challenges Bute Findings by Medical and Veterinary Experts
By Steven Long
HOUSTON, (Horseback) – A second term state representative from a rural village who claims to represent the entire horse industry has challenged a peer reviewed article in a distinguished scientific journal citing a letter from three agricultural school equine science professors.
Rep. Sue Wallis (R) of Recluse, WY (pop 13), is the nation’s most outspoken proponent of reopening U.S. horse slaughter plants, shut down after Congress refused to fund federal meat inspectors in such facilities, and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear challenges to state laws in Texas and Illinois outlawing them.
The paper titled, “Association of phenylbutazone (Bute) usage with horses bought for slaughter”: a public health risk states in its abstract:
“Sixty-seven million pounds of horsemeat derived from American horses
were sent abroad for human consumption last year. Horses are not raised as food animals in the United States, and mechanisms to ensure the removal of horses treated with banned substances from the food chain are inadequate at best. Phenylbutazone (PBZ) is the most commonly used non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) in equine practice. Thoroughbred (TB) race horses like other horse breeds are slaughtered for human consumption. Phenylbutazone is banned for use in any animal intended for human consumption because it causes serious and lethal idiosyncratic adverse effects in humans.
The number of horses that have received phenylbutazone prior to being sent to slaughter for human consumption is unknown but its presence in some is highly likely. We identified eighteen TB race horses that were given PBZ on race day and sent for intended slaughter by matching their registered name to their race track drug record over a five year period. Sixteen rescued TB race horses were given PBZ on race day. Thus, PBZ residues may be present in some horsemeat derived from American horses.
The permissive allowance of such horsemeat used for human consumption poses a serious public health risk.”
Wallis, in a press release cited a letter to the article’s publisher, Food and Chemical Toxicology by four agricultural school professors challenging the findings of its authors, Drs.
Nicolas Dodman, a veterinary anesthesiologist at Tufts University, Nicolas Blondeau, The Institute of Molecular and Cellular Pharmacology (France), and Ann Marini, MD, PhD, of the Department of Neurology, Uniformed University of the Health Sciences.
The three experts changing the findings of Dodman, Blondeau, and Marini, are William Day, PhD of Morristown State College, Sheryl King PhD, PAS, of Southern Illinois State University, Don Henneke, PhD of Tarlton State University, and Pat Evans EdD of Scottsdale Community College. All are equine science instructors with no medical or veterinary training.
Marini was unavailable for comment.
The study’s critic also wrote a lengthy note to Congress blasting the study failed to mention that bute is prohibited by the federal Food and Drug Administration for use in all food animals.
Asked by Horseback Online how the three United Horsemen experts could challenge the paper with no medical training, Wallis replied, “By that reasoning the original article authors weren’t qualified to write it.”
Horseback then asked Wallis, “Why does England and the rest of Europe require horse passports and only horses raised for their meat enter the food chain for human consumption?”
There has been no response.
“They really cherry picked their facts,” said John Holland, president of the Chicago Based Equine Welfare Alliance which completed a three day Washington D.C. conference last week featuring some of the nation’s top equine welfare scientists, academics, and advocates including Dr.
Marini.
“For example, they stated that ninety percent of PBZ disappears from the blood in just over a day,” Holland said. “They neglected to mention its metabolite oxyphenylbutazone which is just as dangerous and lasts much longer.”
More recently in an Irish veterinary journal, the metabolite issue is addressed as well.
“Sue’s experts also omitted the fact that PBZ takes up in injured tissue,” Holland said in a written response to Horseback Online. “And then they cited an industry recommendation that was never adopted as if it had some special credibility: The 2004 Proceedings of The United States Pharmacopeial Convention reported that evidence had been compiled by the Canadian FARAD leading to the recommendation of a withdrawal time of 60 days following administration of phenylbutazone paste to beef animals and a withholding time of 10 days in milk would be sufficient to avoid residues.”
Holland countered misrepresentation saying, “they claimed I am ‘associated with HSUS and linked to PETA.’ I have no linkage to PETA what-so-ever, and only a loose association with HSUS (as if that were a crime).”
“They ignored the standing rule that PBZ is banned in all meat animals with no withdrawal period and that it is only allowed in diary animals under six months of age in a few countries. In other words, they are trying to spin things to create doubt where there really isn’t any,” Holland said.
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Once gain Wallis speaks with an uneducated forked tongue. I sincerely hope that her equine scientists from obscure schools are sued for malicious slander. Talk about associations and political agenda. I believe Henneke (he did invent the equine body scale) is a card carrying member of none other than the country’s largest slaughter proponent and overbreeding horse organization the American Quater Horse Association. Good ole Sue who knows nothing about horses is willing to accept the findings of the pseudo science of the GAO but has the nerve to have unqualified equine science instructors critique a medical article. I wonder when they plan on publishing in the New England Journal of Medicine probably when good ole Wallis mounts a 3 day event horse in an English saddle and attempts the water jump at Kentucky Horse Park. No jackasses do not fly.
If ignorance is bliss, Sue Wallis must be one happy woman. So the FDA is wrong? The EU is wrong? These agencies make rules for public safety. We know there is no such altruistic motive here. Next thing we know, Sue will be saying that bute is perfectly safe for humans too. Guess all those people who got cancer and died were making it up. Talk about a convenient omission of facts.
Bute. It’s what’s for dinner. Sue, please have second or third helpings.
In all seriousness, Sue raises cattle. I would like the USDA, FDA or APHIS to visit her farm and test her cattle for prohibited substances since she seems to believe that bute poses no risk.
Absolutely! AND all the cattlemen’s organizations that also rabidly endorse horse slaughter for human consumption! I issue a challenge here and now – put up or shut up.
Okay, who is first in line for those inspections?
Is it possible I smell a slander suit cooking, fermenting?
No, like you, the authors of the bogus report on the landmark paper have every right to say what they said under the principle of “fair comment” no matter how rediculous what they said happens to be. Under the First Amendment we have a sacred Constitutionally guaranteed right to make fools of ourselves.
The Editor
Yes, but you can’t yell fire in a crowded theater, when there isn’t one.
Yes but universities have standards for both conduct and research. Where I teach this sort of behavior would not sit well.
And how come you can advocate breaking the law?
Suzanne I am suggesting that the university (college) would not appreciate this sort of attack against a professional publication or other professionals.One is free to challenge the justness of a law but we are not free to malign other academics in this highly unprofessional manner.
“Dr. Marini was unavailable for comment.”
She’s probably still rolling on the floor laughing. Oh Sue………
I’m bored with Wallis. She’s had more than her 15 minutes. I agree… she doesn’t pass the laugh test.
With the scientific evidence mounting, I’m more interested in hearing from those who know the difference between a proton and a moron. I mean neuron!! My apologies, Sue, just a typo.
I’m really interested in hearing from AVMA and AAEP, US veterinary organizations on record as supporting slaughtering US horses for human consumption.
I’d ask, as treating veterinarians, how do you see your moral and ethical responsibility for the health of families consuming US-sourced horse meat? If your members prescribe or recommend a drug banned for food animals, are you doing all you can to see that horse is never slaughtered?
Do you have a plan to deal with the possibility … with Ireland as an example … that your member veterinarians could risk prosecution if horses they treated test positive for banned drugs in an EU slaughterhouse?
Will you help pay for their legal defense?
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Once horses are micro-chipped and tracked, the chain of evidence will be hard to refute.
Horse slaughter is about money. The beautiful thing about money is it’s fluid; it can go in any direction.
What we have now is a widespread, intentional disregard for drug and animal welfare laws by US horse slaughterers. Every organization, race track, owner and veterinarian in the slaughter game is complicit.
Once drug law violators can be tracked, somebody is going to pay, and I’m guessing it ain’t gonna be the majority of Americans who want horse slaughter stopped.