CLEAN FLOCKS AND HERDS.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XLV, Issue 2533, 23 January 1923, Page 1

CLEAN FLOCKS AND HERDS.

PROTECTION FROM INFECTIOUS DISEASES.

At the Science Congress at Wellington last week Professor H. Wooruff, Director of Veterinary School of Melbourne University took us the subject of his presidential address “The Prevention of the Spread of Contagious Diseases of Animals.” He referred to the immense losses which had resulted from epidemic diseases of stock in Europe during the nineteenth century, notably from cattle plague, foot-and-mouth diseases, and bovine pleuro-pneumonia, and showed that these losses had impelled the of various countries to establish State veterinary sanitary services. Coincident of these costly epidemics in Britain and on the Continent, colonists in various parts of the Empire were introducing pedigree stock from Britain, and it was surprising, not that we had introduced one or two contagious diseases, but that we had escaped so many. The lecturer then touched on a number of cases in which the contagion of some specific disease of animals had been unconsciously introduced from an infected into a clean country, among others glanders in army horses returned to England after the South African War, foot-and-mouth disease introduced into the United States by means of some vaccine lymph imported from Japan, and cattle plague carried into Antwerp by some Indian cattle which were simply transhipped in the quarantine station, but left the contagion behind them. The lecturer then asked whether we were repeating the mistakes of our forefathers and. whether we wei*e in danger of introducing diseases which would cause great loss in the future. He thought we were in some instances, and gave examples, lie then proceeded to discuss the need for the introduction of pedigree stock from abroad, and laid down the principle that the veterinary advisers of the .Government should have as their watchword: “The maximum facilities for the introduction of stock compatible with the safety of our own Hocks and herds.” It was easy to exterminate contagious diseases with the poll-axe or to exclude infection by excluding all live animals, but such a policy did not require very high qualifications to carry it out;jfEmy fool could exclude, but it required highly-trained observers capable of applying scientific laboratory tests to allow importation with safety. The lecturer then detailed the more modern methods of detecting infected animals, and concluded with a plea for tho employment of highly-trained veterinary officers educated up to the point of graduation on general lines but thereafter made specialists in the particular line they selected for practice.