No. 4.] CATTLE COMMISSIONERS. 501 



cedures for controlling the danger to man through the use 

 of meat and milk of tuberculous animals. This second com- 

 mission was appointed in July, 1896, and after nearly two 

 years' work it made its report on the thirty-first day of 

 March, 1898. 



In this report the commission confined itself mainly to two 

 branches, "namely, the prevention of the infection of hu- 

 man beings, from (a) the consumption of meat affected with 

 tuberculosis and (b) from the consumption of milk drawn 

 from tuberculous cows." 



They refer to the report of the Royal Commission on Tu- 

 berculosis, which reported in 1895, to the effect that : — 



Tuberculous disease in bovines is identical with that in the hu- 

 man subject, and that it is communicable from one to the other, 

 though the manifestations of the disease differ in some respects 

 in the human from that in the lower animals. 



Then they continue : — 



We have also considered their finding, that " any person who 

 takes tuberculous matter into the body as food incurs risk of ac- 

 quiring tuberculous disease." . . . Nothing that has come before 

 us in the course of our inquiry has raised any doubt in our minds 

 aa to the accuracy of this opinion. 



The reference in the report to tuberculin is an important 

 one. It is more especially interesting, as it corresponds so 

 closely to the experience of the Massachusetts Board in this 

 direction. In section 13 they say : — 



We have felt that the value of our report, and any recommen- 

 dations which we can base upon it, must depend, in very large 

 measure, on the degree in which accumulated experience has jus- 

 tified confidence in the tuberculin test, not only among veterinary 

 experts, but among stock owners and persons engaged in the milk 

 trade. We have therefore directed very special and searching 

 inquiry into this matter. Only one witness, a Yorkshire dairy 

 farmer, expressed any doubts on the matter, and even he, while 

 thinking that it "was not altogether reliable," believed it to be 

 "fairly accurate." In Berlin, in Copenhagen, in London and 

 other places where the action of tuberculin has been made a spe- 



