The Register-Herald, Beckley, West Virginia

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February 15, 2011

Agriculture officials: Greenbrier sheriff has authority in horse case

State says they are only prohibited from placing quarantine

By Sarah Plummer Register-Herald Reporter

LEWISBURG — The West Virginia Department of Agriculture reiterates that local law enforcement has authority in cases of animal abuse and neglect when issues of infectious disease are not present after a miscommunication seems to have brought the Greenbrier County horse abuse investigation to a halt.

Over the weekend, Greenbrier County Sheriff Jim Childers reported to The Register-Herald that his officers where barred from Grady Whitlock’s farm by the state veterinarian.

On Monday, Childers reported that the sheriff’s office plans to get back on the property Monday night or Tuesday morning, and that “the way I understood it was that the reason we could not get on the property was because the state would not quarantine.”

Childers then reported that his information came from Cpl. Todd Williams, the sheriff’s deputy now in charge of the investigation.

Williams could not be reached for comment.

Buddy Davidson, communications officer for the Department of Agriculture, asserted Monday, “We did not prevent the sheriff from entering the property. What we did do was refuse to put a quarantine (on the property) because the situation does not allow us to legally place a quarantine.”

The state’s acting veterinarian, Dr. Jewell Plumley, told Sen. Ron Miller, D-Greenbrier, that the agriculture department took an active role in the case of under-fed horses on a farm near Lewisburg.

Twenty-eight animals perished, and others were so ill-fed it wasn’t possible to move them, she said.

Afterward, the veterinarian, who is based in Moorefield, said the state sent personnel to the scene to assess the situation.

“We tapped into our emergency fund so that all these dead animals could be transported to a landfill in Greenbrier County,” she said.

In a press release, Commissioner of Agriculture Gus R. Douglass explained that since the dead horse carcasses have been removed, there is no longer a threat of disease and the Department of Agriculture does not have the legal authority to intervene.

Moreover, the state helped with the roundup of horses since the fencing was considered inadequate, Plumley said.

“The problem is, the horses are not in a good condition to leave the site,” she said.

“They need to be fed in place, watered and monitored closely to get increased nutrition so they can be in a capacity to be relocated.”

Plumley told the committee that her team, working with a veterinarian in the region, determined that no diseases were prevalent in the situation.

And that left only one reason for the massive horse deaths that, at this point, have totaled at least 36 horses, one cow and one calf — poor nutrition.

Davidson expressed, “We want to see a resolution to this issue as well, but we have to stay within the law.”

Register-Herald Reporter Mannix Porterfield contributed to this story.

—E-mail: splummer@register-herald.com

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