"FOOT AND MOUTH."

Press, Volume LXVI, Issue 20089, 19 November 1930, Page 16

"FOOT AND MOUTH."

CHANGE OF METHODS. SERL'M TREATMENT KOR CONTACTS. An important ehang.' in policy on the part of the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, as the authority responsible for the control of foot-and mouth disease throughout Great. Britain, is embodied in a new Order published in the London ''Gazette" last month. In effect the new Order is a modification of the policy of slaughtering all affeeted animals and also animals that have been in eontact with them. It provides for serum treatment of "contacts." The Order provides that ''the .Minis ter may. for the purpose of preventing the spread of foot-and-mouth disease, treat with serum, as often as may be in his opinion necessary, any animals which have been in contact with animals affected with foot-and-mouth disease or which have, in his opinion, been exposed to the danger of infection of that disease." This change of policy will come as n surprise to farmers generally (says a Home paper) because there has been no official hint that the Ministry had developed faith in any special preventive serum. it is generally believed that the most infective stage of this most; highly infectious disease is the incubative stage, and this latter stage