FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASE.

Taranaki Daily News, 28 April 1931, Page 11

FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASE.

(To the Editor.)

Sir, —As the importation of foot-and-mouth disease would send this country bankrupt and cause suffering to everyone, I beg more space to ventilate the question as best I can with my lame pen. Surely any business man can realise the loss that it would be to everyone’s business if an epidemic of cattle plague rendered it necessary to slaughter the valuable herds of this country, which have taken years to build up. Where is the necessity to take the risk fraught with such grave results to all? Is this another sacrifice to the sacred sharks. Hereunder are Herbert Spencer’s comments on English methods of preventing the spread of foot-and-mouth disease: “Over his pipe in the village ale-house, the labourer says very positively what Parliament should do about the ‘foot-and-mouth disease.’ At the farmer’s market-table, his master makes, the glasses jingle as, with his fist, he emphasises the assertion that ho did not get half enough compenation for his slaughtered beasts during the cattle plague.” It is well to remember just now, notwithstanding all the medical science at hand and all the discipline and pomp, the men in Trentham camp were dying off from spine disease like plaguestricken sheep, and the history of all military camps is typical right down through the ages. Spencer goes on to say: “That the State, which fails to secure the health of men, even in its own employ, should, fail to secure the health of beasts, might perhaps bo taken as self-evident; though possibly some, comparing the money laid out on' stables with the money laid out on cottages, might doubt the corollary. Be this as it may, however, the recent history of cattle disease and of legislation to prevent cattle disease yields the same lessons as are yielded above. Since 1848 there have been many Acts of Parliament bearing the general titles of Contagious Diseases (Animals) Acts. Measures to stamp out, as the phrase goes, this or that disease have been called for as imperative. Measures have been passed, and then, expectation not being fulfilled, amended, measures have been passed, and then reamended measures; so that of late no session has gone by without a Bill to cure evils which, previous Bills have tried to cure, but did not. Notwithstanding the keen interest felt by ruling classes in ths success of these, measures, they have succeeded so ill that, the ‘foot-and-mouth disease’ has not been stamped, out, has not even been kept in. check, but during the past year has spread alarmingly in various patrs of the Kingdom. Continually the Times has had blaming letters, and reports of local meetings called to condemn the existing laws and io insist on better. From all quarters there have come accounts of ineffective regulations and. incapable officials —of policemen who do the work of veterinary surgeons, of machinery described by Mr., Fleming, veterinary surgeon of the Royal Engineers, as ‘clumsy, disjointed and inefficient.’”

It is but a few months ago that complaints were being made in the English newspapers that diseased stock was being imported into Britain. The means taken to prevent the spread of tick-fever in this, country was to require that the animals be registered. There was no examination by a qualified veterinary surgeon. American writers state that even when every precaution possible was taken wjth animals from diseased districts, though showing no signs of disease, yet the disease broke out among the cattle in the districts through which they passed. So they stopped any stock from coming in. There is no doubt that British farmers having to compete against farm products from the Dominions would lose no sleep if the herds of the Dominions were slaughtered, as it would cause a boom to their business.—l am, etc., WAYBACK.