I've touched on some issues in previous columns that have found their way back into the news recently. So I wanted to take an opportunity to give you a quick update on a couple of pressing issues.

Fate of Wild Horses

In a previous column, I reported that Madeleine Pickens, wife of Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens, offered to create a refuge for wild horses.

Unfortunately, officials with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) have declined Madeleine Pickens' proposal to create a refuge for as many as 30,000 wild horses, on grounds that the plan is not viable under current federal law.

Pickens offered to establish the sanctuary for horses currently in BLM long-term holding facilities last year after the agency announced it would consider euthanizing some of the animals.

Pickens' proposal placed the refuge on a 1 million-acre Nevada site that incorporated both public and private lands, and requested a $500 per horse per year BLM stipend to fund a nonprofit foundation to oversee the horses' care.

But under the Wild Free-Roaming Horses and Burro Act of 1971, stipends are paid only to private landowners who care for federally-owned horses. And because public portions of the site lie outside grazing areas designated by the Act, federally-owned horses cannot be located there.

There are apparently other options such as BLM contracting the Pickens' Foundation to care for the wild horses on private land, or giving her title to the horses making them private property without compensation.

Oral Health Supplements

Thehorse.com reported the following in their health e-newsletter:

Although horse owners continue to administer oral joint health supplements (OJHS), a substantial proportion of these products are substandard in quality, efficacy and safety, according to a presentation given at the 2008 American Association of Equine Practitioners convention, held Dec. 6-10 in San Diego, Calif., Wayne McIlwraith reviewed use of these products from a paper he co-authored with Stacey Oke.

Manufacture of OJHS is mostly an unregulated industry with widespread lack of quality control, including improper labeling practices (with incorrect, incomplete, or misleading analysis of content), lack of standardization of appropriate therapeutic dosing, and the potential for contamination with dangerous substances, such as heavy metals, pesticides, dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), or other compounds prepared in the manufacturing plant. More than one-third of the products do not meet label claims. In addition, McIlwraith is concerned that there is no mandatory federal recording of adverse event occurrence with these products. And, there is no incentive to perform any in vivo (in the live horse, as opposed to samples in a lab setting) research because there are no requirements to demonstrate product efficacy.

There is also no reported information on interaction of OJHS with other pharmaceutical medications or with herbal preparations, plus not all side effects of OJHS have been recorded in veterinary literature or are well-understood. For example, there is some concern that glucosamine has the potential to increase insulin resistance, which is of great concern in geriatric horses, particularly those at risk for laminitis.