BUREAU OF ANIMAL INDUSTRY. 3l3 



NEEDED LEGISLATION. 



Further legislation by Congress is still needed in order to enable the 

 department to exercise efficient control over certain matters relating 

 to the live-stock industry and for the public good. Reference has 

 already been made to the desirability of certain amendments to the 

 meat-inspection law. Some of the following recommendations have 

 been made in previous reports. 



QUARANTINE AND TRANSPORTATION OF LIVE STOCK. 



Under recent decisions of the courts the act of Congress of March 

 3. 1905, entitled "An act to enable the Secretary of Agriculture to 

 establish and maintain quarantine districts, to permit and regulate 

 the movement of cattle and other live stock therefrom, and for other 

 purposes," does not give the department power to control shipments 

 of live stock in the course of interstate transportation by rail after 

 such shipments have been moved from quarantined States and have 

 been received by connecting carriers in States which are not quaran- 

 tined. It is important, in order to prevent the spread of contagious 

 disease, that the department should have power to continue its con- 

 trol over such shipments of live stock from quarantined States until 

 the animals have reached their destination and have been safely dis- 

 posed of. The Solicitor of the department has suggested that the 

 act be amended by the addition of the following clause, which has 

 been inserted in the estimates for appropriations for the coming 

 fiscal year: 



Provided, That hereafter all the provisions of the said act approved March 

 third, nineteen hundred and five, shall apply to any railroad company or other 

 common carrier whose road or line forms any part of a route over which cat- 

 tle or live stock transported in the course of shipment from any quarantined 

 State or Territory or the District of Columbia, or from the quarantined por- 

 tion of any State or Territory or the District of Columbia into any other State 

 or Territory or the District of Columbia. 



Experience in the enforcement of what is known as the 28-hour law 

 has shown the desirability of exempting in some cases from its 

 operation live stock which is being shipped und'^r quarantine restric- 

 tions. Owing to unforeseen delays it is sometimes necessary in order 

 to comply with the law to unload stock which is being shipped under 

 quarantine restrictions into pens w^hich are not specially set apart 

 for that class of stock and which are likely to be used soon after- 

 wards for other stock, and in this way infection has sometimes been 

 spread. This danger could be practically obviated if the Secretary 

 of Agriculture were clothed with powei in such cases of emergency 

 to waive the provisions of the law so that animals under quarantine 

 might be kept in the cars for a sufficient time to reacli o point where 

 facilities were available for handling them without danger to other 



stock. 



Although existing law authorizes the Secretary of Agriculture to 

 require the disinfection of live-stock cars moving into or out of a 

 section that is quarantined, it is desirable to have this authority 

 extended so as to empower the Secretary of Agriculture to require 

 tiie disinfection of any live-stock cars used in interstate commerce 



