Nc. 6. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 109 



of tuberculosis may also bo appraised and destroyed, or they may be 

 established as a separate, <]narantined herd, and their milk used oi- 

 sold after proper pasteurization. To keep tubercular cows alive 

 under these necessary restrictions is the exception. To care for them 

 separately is troublesome, and to dispose of heated milk profitably is 

 diflicult, So this method, which is practically the Bang system, is 

 not popular. If our herds were larger and if tubercular cattle were 

 more numerous the farmers' decision on this point might be different. 



''If the dogma recently launched by Koch were true, the keeping of 

 tubercular cows in separate herds apart from liealthy cattle would at 

 once become more popular, for their milk could then be sold without 

 heating and could be used freely and without question as food for 

 babies and sick people. But as live stock sanitarians, we must not 

 overlook (lie important fact that bovine tuberculosis is readily trans- 

 missible to calves and swine through the milk of tubercular cows, and 

 if this disease is to be checked among farm animals, one of the most 

 important precautions is not to feed tubercular cows milk to animals. 

 This fact is not based on indirect inference and back-handed reason- 

 ing, as Koch's dogma is, but is supported by thousands of cases of 

 natural infection and by scores of accurately controlled scientific ex- 

 periments. 



''In addition to the voluntary eradication of tuberculosis as above 

 described, advanced cases and cows with tubercular udders are, 

 wherever found, placed at once in strict quarantine, and are kept in 

 confinement until destroyed. 



"This general plan has the entire sympath}^ and support of the 

 cattle owners of Pennsylvania. Under it in six years nearly 6,000 

 tubercular cattle have been destroyed and the prevalence of tubercu- 

 losis has been reduced more than one-half. There are constantly on 

 file at least three times as many applications for State aid as the ap- 

 propriation will cover, and as a result a great many herd owners carry 

 out the general plan here outlined, under State supervision, but at 

 their own expense." 



ANTHRAX, 



xVnthrax has persisted in several of the old centers and has ap- 

 peared this yeav in a few localities where it was previously unknown. 



Serious loss has in each case been prevented by vaccination. 

 During the year, 560 animals have been vaccinated on farms where 

 the disease had appeared, either this year or in years past and where, 

 therefore, the animals were imminently exposed. 



No animal has died of anthrax after full protection with vaccine 

 until the immunily has expired, after about a year. Several instruc 

 tive instances of the value of anthrax vaccination have occurred dur 



