IMPORTANT DISCOVERY

Evening Star, Issue 19589, 22 June 1927, Page 11

IMPORTANT DISCOVERY

FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASE

DECREASE IN OUTBREAKS,

All extraordinary discovery, made by tho Foot-and-mouth Disease Research Committee, was announced in advance of its report by Lord Bledisloo,_ Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, in ibc House of Lords. The virus has not yet been isolated, ho stated, but it is now proved that whereas the virus becomes inert in the flesh of a carcass hours alter slaughter, it remains active for thirty to forty days in the blood, and for seventy-six days in the bone marrow. One immediate^ result of this discovery, which he described as one of the most valuable made in this branch of research for many years, is that the Government is about to issue an order compelling pig breeders _ who use slaughter house offal to boil such dial before using it as feeding .stub. A GRAVE SOURCE OF DANGER. Figures given by Lord Blcdisloo show a striking decrease in foot-and-mouth outbreaks following the tracing of a case in Lanarkshire last year to pig ' carcasses of foreign origin. A drastic order prohibiting the importation of carcasses from the Continent was then made, and tho steady decrease of British outbreaks, taken together with tho new discovery and tho continued increase of outbreaks abroad, show that science has put its finger on one of tho gravest sources of danger to British stock breeders. Lord Blcdisloo said that there have been only nineteen outbreaks this year, compared with thirty-nine'in the same period last year. Outbreaks bad fallen from 1929, involving a, payment of £2,205,000 in 1023, and 1,440, with a. payment of £1,893,000, in 1924, to 204 last year, when £123,000 was paid in compensation. In the same period foreign outbreaks have : ncrcased enormously, and the numbers for last vear wore :—-Geniiany, 187,200; Denmark, 97,000; Belgium, 85.000; and Franco. 48,000. “The order prohibiting foreign importations,” saids Lord Blcdisloo, “has protected us against the real danger of tho prevalence of disease so near our shores.’’ Ho added that the Research Committee had traced many of the recent outbreaks to the consumption of slaughter house offal by pigs. The chairman of the Research Committee which has made tho new discovery is Professor C. J. Martin, F.R.S., director of tho Lister stitutc and professor of experimental pathology in the University of London.