AHF knocks on doors in Washington

November, 2006

Dr. Donald Walsh admits he had low expectations in February 2005, when he walked in the front door of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and told a security guard trying to keep out terrorists that the agency needed to study grass laminitis.

Dr. Donald Walsh pauses outside the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 2005

Whether it was Walsh's hutzpah, or the simple kindness of the guard, at the end of the day, Walsh found success in a city where many get handed failure.

Walsh had been wrestling for years with the knowledge that the federal government funded forage research for cows, sheep, hogs and many more species, but no agency was studying how the content of grass and hay was affecting horses, despite the long-standing link between grass and laminitis.

But, it wasn't on his mind on that sunny, cold Sunday afternoon in February as Don and Diana Walsh toured a museum on the Washington Mall after wrapping up a trip to Virginia to give a lecture on laminitis.

When they walked out of the museum, they were looking straight at a sparkling building marked United States Department of Agriculture. The building was closed. The Walshes were leaving Monday for St. Louis, but they went back to the USDA before departing.

When the guard asked Walsh for a name to buzz, Walsh hemmed and hawed, looked at the marquis and chose the Agricultural Research Service. That prompted a less patient employee to say, "It's not even in the building; it's in Beltsville'' in Maryland.

Rather than show Walsh the door, the guard picked up a telephone directory and called the Beltsville office, talking to the secretary for Steve Kappes, who is deputy administrator of animal production and protection. The secretary said she would have Kappes return Walsh's call as soon as possible.

The Walshes got only as far as the sidewalk before the cell phone rang, and Kappes said he'd look into it. A few days later, he called back with the name of Jim Strickland.

Strickland is research leader of an ARS lab at the University of Kentucky, the only lab in the country designated to do equine research. It is set up to analyze horses from the genome level all the way out to the field.

Strickland's team had recognized the same lack of current equine forage data that had been bothering Walsh. They were planning studies to develop new forages and to analyze grass preferences by horses. Laminitis research had not been on the agenda. After Walsh made a presentation to the lab in April 2005, Strickland saw laminitis as a good fit and said the lab would add it, but he cautioned that his resources were limited.

The laminitis studies are being overseen by Strickland and Dr. Brett Kirch, an experienced equine veterinarian with a strong backgound in forage and livestock.

One project underway is a greenhouse study looking at nonstructural carbohydrate accumulation in stressed plants.

A second project set to start will look at cytokines produced by fat cells. These cytokines may act as markers in the blood to predict which horses will develop laminitis when exposed to grass; the cytokines also may function to predict the ability of the horse to recover.

Strickland says that forage research once was strong -- in the day when horses were used as tractors. The lab is playing catch-up now to fill the current void of data.

In April 2006, Walsh attended an ARS national stakeholders' meeting in Kansas City. A stakeholder is a person who uses or conducts agricultural research. Walsh was the first equine stakeholder to attend a meeting, perhaps ever or at least in years, and pleaded the horse's need for forage and laminitis research. It has been written into the USDA's five-year action plan as a "high" priority.

Walsh already is outlining what he hopes this research can accomplish. He would like to see it:

-- Determine what in grass is causing some horses to founder.
-- Determine what is the proper nutrition for horses, including those prone to founder.
-- And develop a safe grass for pastures as well as for farmers to use to grow hay that does not cause laminitis.

In the meantime, Walsh has been working with contacts in Washington to try to get Congress to include funding in future budgets for more extensive laminitis research. Stay tuned for updates of "Dr. Walsh Goes to Washington."