Weekly Livestock-Equine News: September 15, 2025

New SoundByte: DectoGard™

DectoGard™ (doramectin topical solution) from Aurora Pharmaceutical is the first generic doramectin topical solution approved by the FDA. Treats and controls gastrointestinal roundworms, lungworms, eyeworms, grubs, biting and sucking lice, horn flies and mange mites in cattle. Find more in the SoundByte from Veterinary Advantage

Veterinary Pharmaceutical Solutions enters poultry market

Veterinary Pharmaceutical Solutions, a livestock pharmaceutical compounding company, appointed a commercial director of poultry, signaling VPS’s expansion into poultry. Darrell Stoner brings over 20 years of experience from Elanco’s poultry division and currently serves as chair of the Health & Welfare Committee for the International Poultry Welfare Alliance. He also sits on the boards of The Poultry Federation and the National Turkey Federation.

Terminal labs still draw controversy

Terminal labs – in which lab animals are euthanized after the procedure – have been abandoned by many veterinary schools and replaced with models with state-of-the-art materials. But some older schools still offer elective labs in live animal surgery after which the animal – usually a livestock species – is not awakened from anesthesia. Veterinary educators are uneasy discussing the topic.

First gene-edited horses spark controversy among horse breeders

Several horses in Argentina that underwent CRISPR-Cas9, a gene-editing process, to quicken their pace have breeders worried that the technology will threaten people’s livelihoods and compromise the tradition of using selective breeding to generate elite horses. But livestock producers in the U.S. are optimistic. For example, Minnesota-based Acceligen has developed a process to edit the prolactin receptor gene to give cattle shorter, slicker hair, providing tolerance to heat stress.

Study explores ability of swine flu to spread in cattle

The results of a study by Kansas State University and the Center on Emerging and Zoonotic Animal Diseases found that in addition to H5N1 HPAI virus, swine H3N2 virus can infect cattle but does not transmit efficiently among them, suggesting that other subtypes of influenza A viruses could infect and replicate in cattle. The study was published in the July 9 edition of mBio.

Seek Labs working on therapeutics for evolving viral strains

Biotech firm Seek Labs reports it has added foot-and-mouth disease in its Global Disease Atlas, highlighting the company’s ability to map high-priority veterinary pathogens and accelerate the development of countermeasures. Seek Labs scans viral genomes across strains to identify “genomic vulnerabilities,” which are designed to remain therapeutically relevant even as the virus evolves.