Commissioner of Agriculture 321 



fact that his killing of these suspected animals conveys with it 

 the sentence upon the state, district, herds, roads, yards, loading- 

 banks, cars, etc., which they have used, as being infected places, 

 and necessitates a quarantine coextensive with the states, routes, 

 rolling stock, etc., through which the animals have come. He 

 has removed all evidence of the absence of infection from the 

 suspected herd, and, by his possibly mistaken diagnosis, has made 

 it imperative on the officials of a large block of states to quaran- 

 tine the suspected ones until a thorough investigation of all flocks, 

 herds and individual animals within their borders shall have 

 shown that the aphthous fever is absolutely nonexistent there. 

 The resulting losses in the interim are almost incalculable. Inter- 

 state and intra-state traffic are shut down upon, all movement of 

 stock is interrupted; fairs and markets are closed; even butcher 

 animals have to be killed where they stand; breeding is largely 

 put a stop to; dairies cannot be replenished nor milk contracts 

 carried out; fodders cannot be carried to feeding stock, nor feed- 

 ing stock to fodders, pastures are wasted for lack of stock, and 

 stock sacrificed for want of feed ; dairy products must be sterilized 

 before they can be put on the market, and a ruinous restriction is 

 imposed on agriculture on every side. 



I am stating no hypothetical case. I have stood beside the open 

 trenches dug for the burial of suspected cattle, which were only 

 suspected after all, and were utterly lacking in symptoms and 

 lesions which were conclusive of the existence of foot and mouth 

 disease, and the inoculations from which equally failed to pro- 

 duce aphthous fever lesions. There was no evidence of such 

 disease in the states from which they came, and but for the 

 fact that wiser counsel from outside prevailed, this herd would 

 have been condemned, killed and buried, and a dozen states at 

 least put under the necessity of imposing quarantine on states 

 against which there was not an atom of reliable evidence of infec- 

 tion. Experts found in the suspected herd and its history no clear 

 evidence of foot and mouth disease, but if the herd bearing such 

 exculpatory evidence had been put underground the official con- 

 demnation would have stood not only as against the suspected 

 herd, but against four states at least with which it had been 

 connected. 



11 



