Is elephant TB threat real or just a circus?

PETA warns of positive test for Ringling Bros. elephant; Cornell expert downplays health risk

By RICK KARLIN Capitol bureau (Times Union)

April 28, 2011

ALBANY -- Don't pet the pachyderms.

Actually, circus-goers normally don't get that close to the elephants that Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey uses in its acts, and next month's show scheduled for May 5 through 8 at the Times Union Center is no exception.

Regardless, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, has put out a warning that one of Ringling Bros.'s elephants, Karen, has tested positive for tuberculosis.

Claiming she poses a threat to both humans and other elephants, the animal rights organization has written to state Health Commissioner Nirav Shah asking that he bar entry to the performing pachyderm.

PETA has also contacted the state Department of Agriculture and Markets.

Health Department officials didn't respond to a call on Wednesday while Agriculture and Markets spokeswoman Jessica Ziehm said her agency has no authority over circus elephants.

"I expect we will get some response," Delcianna Winders, PETA's director of captive animal law enforcement, said of the letters she wrote to state officials.

"This is the first time we've learned of one with tuberculosis on the road," she added. Winders noted Karen was excluded from a trip earlier in the season to Tennessee.

The trouble is, Ringling Bros. says Karen has already had a course of antibiotics, even though it's not clear if she ever actually had contagious tuberculosis.

She was given the medicine on a "prophylactic" basis at Ringling Bros.'s Polk City, Fla. animal preserve.

And another type of test, which one expert said was the "gold standard," indicates that the animal is healthy.

"Her trunk washes have always been negative (for the tuberculosis bacteria)," said Danielle Graham, a Ringling Bros. veterinarian.

She said a blood test given to the 43-year-old elephant turned up the tuberculosis antibody, which the body would produce if it had come into contact with the bacteria.

But in the trunk wash, a sample is taken from the elephant's trunk and then cultured for bacteria. That yielded negative results.

So is Karen a potential Tuberculosis Mary of the performing mammal world?

Probably not, said George Kollias, a professor of wildlife medicine at Cornell University's College of Veterinary Medicine.

"I think it's really kind of minimal," said Kollias who said the presence of an antibody doesn't always signal an active illness. "It means possibly the elephant was exposed to tuberculosis at some point in its life history," he said. "It doesn't mean it's actively infected."

Kollias said if the trunk wash culture as well as blood tests turned out positive the animal might have to remain in place at the insistence of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

That's not to say there isn't concern about tubercular elephants.

Kollias recently attended a USDA conference on elephant tuberculosis, which has emerged as a concern during the past 15 years or so. Unlike most other animals, he said, elephants, like humans, are susceptible to the bacterial disease and it can be transmitted between species.

Kollias said PETA representatives were at the meeting and they've grabbed onto the issue as part of their long-standing objection to using animals as circus acts.