ANTHRAX AND BONES.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXXIX, Issue 12648, 7 January 1904, Page 3

ANTHRAX AND BONES.

Mr J. A. Gilruth, Chief Government Veterinarian, who returned from Australia to Wellington yesterday by the Corihthic, gave some attention while in Australia to the question of the sterilising of bones intended for export, and has, come back more convinced than ever that the sooner the sterilising plants are. put up at Auckland and the Bluff the better. Some effort, it is true, is made by exporters-in.-a-large way of business to sterilise the bones which they deal with, but Mr Gilruth’s opinion is that a more effective check upon the introduction of anthrax would be secured it this colony had its own sterilising plants. Speaking to a “ Post ” reporter, Mr Gilruth said there was not the slightest doubt that anthrax existed in, Australia, although people there might not think so. He saw any quantity of sacks of weathered bones—bones of animals long dead and exposed to the weather and picked up along the Stock routes. There were many of these stock routes, and it was unreasonable to suppose that the bones of animals which had died of anthrax were not included among them. “That sort of thing,” said Mr Gilruth,' “simply shows the necessity of having sterilisation carried out thoroughly without any possibility of danger. The trouble is that when the big digesters are full it takes a considerable time for the steam to get through the mass. If the moist heat does not get right through, all the germs will not be killed. I do not know that we have ever got anthrax from Australia, but we know that anthrax does exist there, in certain parts.”

Mr Gilruth found also that Victoria had got anthrax through imported bones, and, furthermore, one outbreak among calves was due to feeding, them on what is known as bonemeal. The bacteriologist fit Melbourne University isolated the anthrax bacillus from a sample of the meal on which some of the affected calves we re being fed. As a result, the Victorian authorities refused to admit, any bones from India. Tasmania also had anthrax from Indian bones in the same way. At all events, the evidence pointed entirely in that direction.