Hi Marieke
Just my .02. I don't know if any disease could be passed on by feeding
animal fat to horses, as I haven't read anything specifically about it and I
don't know what the mode of transmission is for mad cow disease, etc. I think
the virus is more likely to be carried in muscle or blood tissue, but I just
don't know for sure, it's outside my area. I would think that the odds
of disease transmission are pretty low if it were a processed animal fat, ie butter,
but it seems to me there are other disadvantages to it, like cost. The
ONLY nutrient that fat of any kind provides in any significant amount is energy,
and from the body's point of view, it doesn't much care where it gets it from as long as
it's a digestible and palatable source. That is, a gram of butter provides the
same nutritional benefit as a gram of corn oil. Since animal fat is usually
more expensive, you might as well feed the less expensive source of fat, ie
vegetable or corn oil, as there is no benefit to feeding the more expensive.
If by feeding a vegetable oil, you also avoid any chance of disease transmission,
and also satisfy your own ethical feelings (which is fine), then that's just
frosting on the cake.
It just so happens my master's thesis has to do with fat utilization in
endurance horses, so I have a stack of about a billion research articles
on anything and everything you'd ever want to know about feeding fat to
horses. If you have any questions, I'm happy to try and look it up for you.
Good luck
Susan Evans also Cato, Katy, Lady and Dakota the Terrible
Equine Research Center
California State Polytechnic University, Pomona