HOG CHOLEEA AND MEAT INSPECTION 211 



hogs are worth more as pork than they will ever 

 again be worth on foot, but here legal and sanitary 

 considerations enter in, and it is only where the 

 state law provides for slaughter under inspection 

 and where provision can be made to minimize the 

 danger to other herds that may result from mar- 

 keting the pork, that slaughtering is to be ad- 

 vised. 



New York, for instance, has a law which permits 

 killing under inspection from herds infected with 

 cholera, but it is only at institutions and on farms 

 where the pork will not be placed on the open mar- 

 ket that we have advised such a course. We hab- 

 itually follow the plan of explaining the situation 

 to our client, and informing him that he has a 

 legal right to kill, but that he has at the same time 

 a moral obligation to protect his neighbor. When 

 we offer at the same time the alternative of serum 

 treatment, giving a prognosis as nearly exact as is 

 possible, there are few who will not decide to use 

 serum or who will not profit by doing so. Indeed 

 in just one instance that we recollect has one of 

 our clients elected to take shelter under the law 

 and disregard his neighbor. This man had a herd 

 consisting originally of about four hundred hogs. 

 Cholera appeared, but he refused to accept our 

 diagnosis. Finally when his herd had dwindled to 

 about one hundred and fifty animals, he decided to 

 vaccinate. It was a forlorn hope, but we began 



