Tuberculous Cows

Press, Volume LXXIV, Issue 22478, 12 August 1938, Page 10

Tuberculous Cows

The director of the Livestock Division of the Department of Agriculture, whose annual report is included in the departmental report, renews the recommendation of a more systematic attack on tuberculosis in the Dominion’s dairy herds, aiming at its ultimate eradication. He advocates, of course, wider use of the established tuberculin test, under legal compulsion.

This method of attack is direct but not fundamental. It will detect diseased animals, an essential object in the control of health in the herd and in the securing of infection-free milk; but it can only assist towards the solution .of the major problem', which is, broadly, one of breeding and management. Apart from this limit upon its usefulness there are those set by the amount of money and the number of skilled men that can be devoted to the work of testing. The director therefore suggests, reasonably, that it should be carried out on a progressive plan, district by district, each being left “ clean,” to the extent that the method will allow. This is obviously a better procedure than testing over the whole Dominion field, but nowhere exhaustively. It should only be pointed out that it ought not to be difficult to map out a programme to cover the whole country within a minimum time, the fixing of which would depend largely on the success of present efforts to increase the supply of veterinarians and other qualified field officers. The need for such a campaign, if it were not already known, would appear in the figures quoted in the report. Of 16,509 cattle tuberculin-tested during the year. 1141, or 6.9 per cent., reacted. Abattoir and meat-export slaughterhouse figures showed that 7.38 per cent, of animals killed were affected by tuberculosis. Even though the degree of affection was in “ a large “ percentage ” only slight, this is disturbing statistical evidence. Naturally enough, the report refers more particularly to the “ deterior- “ ating effect ” of tuberculous infection “ on the “ general standard of animal health,” bu* it does not omit the argument that an attack upon the diseese is also to be counted as ‘ an im- “ portant public-health measure.’ There is no need to emphasise the truth of that. Even though the New Zealand death-rate from tuberculosis is extremely low, the disease remains one of the dark disgraces and heavy distresses of a civilised community. Where one of the sources of infection can definitely be traced, failure to press the necessary preventive effort is a failure of the community’s conscience.