644 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE 



A Member : Can this disease be carried by fowls or pigeons ? 



Doctor Gibson : We believe it could be carried by any com- 

 mon carrier. The germ of foot and mouth disease has never been 

 isolated ; the same with hog cholera. The people who make the 

 serum don't say that they know what hog cholera is. Here and 

 there is a commercial firm that puts out literature saying that they 

 know what the germ is, but it is all to facilitate the sale of their 

 products. 



The trouble came not only on account of Cliristmas meat ready 

 for the market, L'ut we were caught with thousands of head of cat- 

 tle on summer pastures, where the water and feed ran out; and 

 our veterinarians have run over the country day and night to see 

 that that stock was all right, and to permit its movement to a cer- 

 tain point, so that we would know just where it was moved, and all 

 about it. The auction sales have been under a ban, and the short 

 courses. Referring to Ames, let me say again that they voluntarily 

 declared the state short course off. I didn't have to ask them to 

 do it, although I said it inight be wise, but I was in hopes that the 

 coast might be clear. They thought they wouldn't care to risk 

 Avhat stock they have on the college farms belonging to the great 

 state of Iowa. Can you imagine anything, with a disease that we 

 believe is carried the way foot and mouth disease is, worse than a 

 public sale, w^here all come in and tramp over the same ground 

 and go back at night? The extension department at once aban- 

 doned their short courses for fear of exposure. The poultry does 

 not come under the government quarantine in this outbreak, but a 

 poultry show will bring the people just the same as any other kind 

 of a show, and if there was anybody in the community that had 

 this infection on the premises, they would all stand more or less 

 show of taking it home with them from a poultry show or any 

 other public gathering. We made our own rule on the handling 

 of poultry a little more strict than the government, in that we re- 

 quired that no poultry should go to market from, a township in 

 which the disease existed, except it be dressed. Outside of that 

 township, it went in the ordinary way. Some of our poultry in 

 carload lots, both live and dressed was not accepted at Chi- 

 cago until we would make a statement that it did not come from 

 diseased premises. The government required poultry from dis- 

 eased premises to have the feet cut off, be scalded and dressed. In 

 that particular, we have gone stronger than the government, but 

 in every other particular we have followed the request of the gov- 



