No. 5. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 299 



that we can. There is one thing to be said against the advocates of 

 general tuberculin testing as now applied under the law — if it is a 

 good thing and will accomplish tlie purpose of eradicating the dis- 

 ease or of keeping it out of our State, why not apply it to every 

 herd in the State — get rid of all the reactors at once? Now, by not 

 doing that, they admit that it will not accomplish what they claim 

 for it, that it has absolutely failed to accomplish what they claim 

 for it, and I am going to cite you one or two little cases, only, because 

 of the limited time at my disposal. An institution in my county 

 between January 1, 1913 and August, 1913, built a new, modern sani- 

 tary barn; lots of sunlight, twice as much as there would be in this 

 building, bought in the adjoining county 97 cattle, subjected them to 

 the tuberculin test by veterinarians of their own selections, one of 

 them a relative of our State Veterinarian; not a reactor was found; 

 all were pronounced sound. They were driven across the country 

 about 80 miles, assembled in this new, modern sanitary barn, kept 

 free from contact with any other cattle. There was no known method 

 of known communication of the disease, and in April, 1914, they were 

 again subjected to the tuberculin test by another veterinarian and 

 3G reactors were found. They were slaughtered and pronounced by 

 the veterinarian, a very competent gentleman and, 1 think, thor- 

 oughly honest, as 1 think Dr. Marshall is thoroughly honest — found 

 by him to show lesions of the disease. Four others, not reactors at 

 any of the tests, these two prior test were slaughtered later and 

 three of those were found with lesions of the disease. They were held 

 until October — the remaining 57, again tested, and, gentlemen, there 

 are 22 left. There won't be any left after the next test or two. 



Now that is the method of eradicating tuberculosis, but you eradi- 

 cate the herd and annihilate it when you do it. Dr. Moore had pre- 

 cisely the same experience reported in an article in the American 

 Veterinary Review by Prof. Hastings with whom I had my first con- 

 troversy in Hoard's Dairyman. Ninety seven animals were sub- 

 jected to a semi-annual test for four years and out of the 97, 19 were 

 left — a pretty good showing too. 



Where are the cattle coming from? Where are you going to get 

 your milk from? Where are you going to get your future dairy 

 cattle, if you slaughter the animals that react? And a great many 

 that react are found to be perfectly sound, found to show no lesion 

 of the disease after reaction. I have right here in an envelope — if I 

 had all night, I could give it all to you — a report from our State 

 Veterinarian as to the animals tested — animals imported into the 

 State of Pennsylvania and tested in 1914 at Pittsburgh, Lancaster 

 and other places — 27,000 animals, is my recollection, of which num- 

 ber 305 were found to be suspicious. That is a class that don't exist 

 when they test our animals for interstate shipment; they are either 

 reactors or non reactors, they are not suspicious. Three hundred 

 and five were suspicious and of that 305, on the re-test, a large por- 

 tion were found to be sound. TVo hundred and sixty reactors were 

 found and slaughtered. Fifty-three showed negative autopsies; 20% 

 were sound according to the post-morten examination. 



I want to qualify that a little bit; I will admit that in our autopsy 

 the veterinarian may not find physical evidences of the disease in 

 the post mortem and yet the animal may have had the disease. A 

 layman's knowledge don't go quite as far as that of some of these 



