351 



DIVISION OF ANIMAL INDUSTRY. 



Honolulu, October 31, 1914. 

 The Board of Commissioners of Agriculture and Forestry. 



Gentlemen : — That bovine tuberculosis can be eradicated by 

 the means and methods employed by this Board during the past 

 four years seems now to have been fully demonstrated, but 

 whether this aim is to be attained in the Territory of Ilawaii 

 witliin a reasonable space of time will depend entirely upon the 

 compliance of the dairymen and cattle owners with certain re- 

 quirements which the last general tuberculin test, now more than 

 half finished, have emphasized as necessary to success. 



The most important of these requirements is the immediate 

 destruction of all reacting animals or else their absolute segrega- 

 tion. But this latter can no lon.ger be accepted as accomplished 

 so long as the reactors remain anywhere in the neighborhood of 

 the healthy animals. 



While none of the standard textbooks or current scientific 

 periodicals as yet classify tuberculosis, whether human or bovine, 

 as an extremely contagious disease, but still consider it as a mildly 

 infectious disease which can be guarded against by ordinary 

 hygienic and sanitary measures, so long as these are conscienti- 

 ously carried out, our experience with bovine tuberculosis has 

 now fully demonstrated that unless we classify and deal with it 

 as an air-borne contagious disease, capable of being transmitted 

 by wind and dust over distances far in excess of those hitherto 

 accepted, we shall never be able to eradicate it here ; and the only 

 economic and efifective measure known to live stock sanitarians 

 in dealing with an air-borne contagious disease is destruction fol- 

 lowed by disinfection. 



This apparently radical statement is however based upon in- 

 controvertible facts which, with the progress of the bovine tuber- 

 culosis control work, have asserted themselves more and more 

 until finally demonstrated beyond doubt by the results. And 

 these results show tliat the disease persists onlv on the premises 

 where reacting animals are retained and in spite of any precau- 

 tions adopted so far. 



It is not the desire in this report to refer to individual cases 

 and without such reference no actual proof of the above con- 

 tention can be produced, but the statement is made for the pur- 

 pose only of spurring on those dairymen who still adhere to this 

 practice, to desist before their neighbors and colleagues in the 

 dairy business, and who at great expense have cleaned their herds 

 of tubercular animals, rise up and insist that the man who is har- 

 boring the infection by retaining his reactors is deliberatelv in- 

 juring the dairy industry in general and jeopardizing the dearly 

 bought advantages of his neighbor as well as public health. For 



