What is lameness and what (or who) is the gold standard to detect it?

Letter to the Editor: A response to ‘What is lameness and what (or who) is the gold standard to detect it?’

“…Despite Professor van Weeren's and his colleagues’ warnings that this question has now only emerged with the recent clinical adoption of objective lameness evaluation techniques , we believe that this question is much older than this technology, and review of this subject in the early veterinary literature supports this belief.…”

“…We acknowledge that there has been an insidious evolution of the meaning of the word lameness into something more like a disease, primarily, but not exclusively, by non‐veterinary equine husbandry, sport and science. But, we think this perspective is wrong, as it was expressed to be wrong in a previous era, and we do not understand how now in the era of ‘quantitative gait analysis’ this perspective is now not wrong.…”

“…We object to Professor van Weeren's assertion , that by describing that lameness as only a clinical sign we implied that asymmetry is the same as lameness. The word ‘asymmetry’ does not appear in our response , and we were very careful not to make this claim.…”

“…The relationship between asymmetry and lameness, as van Weeren et al . also alluded to , is equivalent to the relationship between internal body temperature and fever, and they both can be measured in the same respective units.…”

“…We also must express concern about Professor van Weeren and colleagues’ explanation that both lay and professional understanding of the term lameness implies something that is always negative and never neutral and we veterinary orthopaedists should not be ‘arrogant’ or ‘powerful enough’ to change society's appreciation of the term lameness. Yet we ask, who better than equine veterinary orthopaedic clinicians to explain this to society?…”