FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASE.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 68, 16 February 1935, Page 6

FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASE.

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —All persons who have an interest in New Zealand should go to the Public Library and read the very able article in the New Zealand Herald of Friday, January 18, under the heading of “Science of Farming” on the livestock embargo. After reading it, the following figures should give them further food for thought: —In the year ending 1932-33 the killings and burnings (all diseased animals must be burned) of stock suffering from foot and mouth disease amounted to 18,000 in Germany, 10,000 in Belgium, 12,000 in France, and 26,000 in Great Britain. One should not forget that Loftier, the discoverer of the virus of foot and mouth disease in IS?2, said he had known cases where the virus had been excreted seven months after recovery. Waldniann, experimenting with 500 recovered cattle, showed virus to be present in six of them at varying intervals from six to 246 days after infection, and yet we are asked to believe this is only a cold. The island of Jersey, which has the best cattle of that breed in the world, has a cattle population of 11,000 and has had in force an embargo on the importation of stock since 1783. that is 152 years. If there is one chance in a million of our getting foot and mouth disease into this country and ruining everyone, we have no moral right to fake that risk. Once it has been introduced into a country it has never been got cut again.—l am, etc., HALDANE COOK.