NON-SPORING BACILLI 303 



throughout the kingdom food regulations, planned to afford 

 better security against the infection of human beings through 

 the medium of articles of diet derived from tuberculous animals. 

 More particularly it is urged that action in this sense should 

 be taken, in order to avert or minimize the present danger 

 arising from the consumption of infected milk. 



Certain facts observed in reference to the elimination of 

 bovine tubercle bacilli by the cow in her milk, are of such 

 importance that they formed the subject of the third 

 Interim Report, and deserve repetition here. 



1. Bovine tubercle bacilli are apt to be abundantly 

 present in milk, as sold to the public, when there is 

 tuberculous disease of the udder of the cow from which 

 it has been obtained. This fact is generally recognized, 

 though not adequately guarded against. 



2. Bovine tubercle bacilli may also be present in the 

 milk of tuberculous cows presenting no evidence whatever 

 of disease of the udder, even when examined post mortem. 



3. In tuberculous cows, the milk leaving the udder may 

 not contain tubercle bacilli, and yet it may and frequently 

 does become infective by contamination with the faeces or 

 uterine discharges of such diseased animal. 



Convinced that measures for securing the prevention of the 

 ingestion of living bovine tubercle bacilli with milk would greatly 

 reduce the number of cases of abdominal and cervical gland 

 tuberculosis in children, the Reporters advise that such measures 

 should include the exclusion from the food supply of the milk 

 of the recognizably tuberculous cow, irrespective of the site of 

 the disease, whether in the udder or in the internal organs. 



(A memorandum is appended in which reference is 

 made to immunity experiments, on which no opinion is 

 expressed, but which are fully reported in Vol. iii. of 

 Appendix to this Report ; and to several other subsidiary 

 experiments.) 



