EQUINE VETERINARY EDUCATION / AE / MARCH 2016


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Editorial Food for thought


Nutrition. means different things to different people. For some


horse owners, discussing their own calorie intake in detail is a normal part of their conversation, but they may still measure their horses’ feed volumetrically, i.e. in terms of flakes, scoops or cups (Murray et al. 2015). Few perhaps really recognise the power of nutrition. My very elderly retired horse, with no ability to chew or ingest short or long fibre, reminds me daily of how powerful nutrition can be. She is in the middle of her third summer of living purely on soaked feed. Despite this, she has maintained great body condition with good muscle definition etc. However, relatively sma"ll changes in her ration composition can result in clinical signs of abdominal pain or inappetance. Very few people dispute that nutrition is key to health and performance and information about what we should and should not eat for this or that reason is almost constantly being provided via one or more media source(s). Why then are certain nutrition-associated conditions, such as obesity, on the increase both in man and horses? Horse owners seem to be keen to learn more about nutrition, with tens of thousands (Murray et al. 2015) signing up for increasingly available online nutrition courses. Despite this, from personal experience, when discussing nutrition, there is still a lot of confusion and misunderstanding. Published reviews of feeding practices also often reveal


dietary practices that are contrary to current best practice (Burk and Williams 2008; Hoffman et al. 2009). Although many of the owner completed surveys are undertaken in high performance horses (thereby perhaps fuelling the myth that feeding optimally is not key to health and performance) they provide no insight into how much better the animals might perform if their nutrition was improved, nor the short- and long-term health benefits of a more optimal diet. Nutrition associated clinical conditions are also commonly found in these animals. However, it seems that some horses cope well in spite of how we feed and manage them, whereas others have an adverse response to even a relatively minor change. Increasingly, we are appreciating that the effect of nutrition reflects not only the nutrients and the feedstuffs that provide these, but also variation in individual physiology (i.e. metabolism as well as gut microbiota). Recent work, for example, has suggested that dietary-induced modulation of the microbiota might be important in the effect of diet on horse behaviour (Destrez et al. 2015). Jansson and Harris (2013) evaluated the practical


uptake of research published on the nutrition of the exercising horse from 1970 to 2010. The conclusion was that whilst some findings have been incorporated into routine practice (e.g. reduction in starch intake even in performance animals and an increase in the use of oil supplementation), not all have been; the question is why not? Is this because the research had no practical application; does it reflect our inability to successfully translate science into practice? Or is it nutrition itself that is the issue? To many, nutrition is not a ‘sexy science’; there are few simple diagnostic tests (especially ones that can be used horse-side) to determine if a case is deficient in a key nutrient, or if the ration is imbalanced.


Nutrition (taken to include diet plus nutritional


management) influences equine health, behaviour, performance and welfare as well as the environment. There is an important role here for the veterinary surgeon, who is often considered to be a major source of good quality nutrition information (Hoffman et al. 2009; AHP 2012; Murray et al. 2015). But should veterinarians be regarded as such a source and do they have sufficient up-to-date knowledge to give such advice? My view is that it is essential that all equine veterinarians keep up to date with the principles of good nutritional practice. Veterinarians should understand the impact that nutrition can have as a cause and in the treatment/management of various equine diseases and conditions. The veterinarian should also know when and whom to reach out to for more complicated cases (e.g. Diplomates with an equine nutrition speciality within the European College of Veterinary and Comparative Nutrition, the American College of Veterinary Nutrition, the American College of Veterinary Internal Medicine or active researchers in the area). Although there are many excellent nonveterinary equine ‘nutritionists’, to my knowledge, currently there is no unified accreditation system for this group as a whole or a global system denoting demonstrable expertise – an opportunity for the future perhaps? A relatively old review of nutrition education within the USA


(Buffington et al. 1996), as reviewed by Roberts and Murray (2014), suggested that many veterinarians did not consider that their nutrition education was fit for purpose. This was supported by a more recent in-depth study in Georgia (Roberts and Murray 2013), where veterinarians stated that they were not very confident in giving equine nutritional advice for several nutrition associated disorders. Of note, most responding veterinarians had not attended any equine nutrition continuing education in the last year. It is hoped that this series of articles in EVE will help address some of the continuing education issues. The American College of Veterinary Nutrition, with assistance from the American Academy of Veterinary Nutrition and the European College of Veterinary and Comparative Nutrition, have recently proposed equine nutrition competencies for graduating veterinarians. A recent survey of 14 veterinary schools in Europe and the Middle East (Becvarova et al. 2015) suggested that whilst the University Deans and faculty members all recognised that nutrition (all species) was very important (averaged 4 out of 5 in importance), 41% of those surveyed said they were not satisfied with the nutritional skills and performance of their graduates. Obviously there are a number of barriers to improving nutrition training: not least a very crowded current curriculum. However, given the increasing recognition of the importance of nutrition in health (including performance) and disease (e.g. obesity, laminitis, equine rhabdomyolysis syndrome, colic, gastric ulcers), I hope that more veterinarians will consider nutrition as an important part of their continuing education and collaborate more with specialists in veterinary nutrition. I am therefore very pleased to be part of this drive to


introduce a series of Clinical Nutrition Articles through EVE to veterinarians around the world. I would like to thank the


© 2016 EVJ Ltd

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