8 BULLETIN" 260, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



our large packing houses where such diseased portions are tanked at 

 temperatures which insure the destruction of all parasites of any sort. 

 On the farm it may be accomplished by boiling any viscera before 

 feeding them to dogs or other animals. The viscera should never 

 be thrown out on the fields. The practice is objectionable of itself; 

 it furnishes a breeding place for flies and is in every respect insani- 

 tary and improper. Viscera and carcasses, if not cooked and fed, 

 should be burned, buried with lime, or disposed of in such a manner 

 that they can not be devoured by dogs. 



An additional method of preventing hydatid disease, and the one 

 that should be emphasized here, is for the owners of dogs to keep 

 them up, and to have stray dogs disposed of by the proper authorities. 

 A person should have substantially the same supervision of his dog's 

 food, for his own sake and for the sake of the dog, that he has of his 

 children's food. It is dangerous as well as unwholesome to allow dogs 

 to forage for a living. A man who does not properly feed his dogs 

 has a poor claim to their care and ownership. Dogs should be kept 

 out of human habitations and treated in general with more regard to 

 their possibilities as disease carriers. 



Hydatid disease is fairly common in Europe. It is quite common in 

 Iceland, India, Eastern Siberia, Algeria, Tunis, Australia, and some 

 South American countries. It has been permitted to assume the pro- 

 portions of a serious menace in Australia, and 3,000 cases of hydatid 

 disease in human beings were reported from there between the years 

 1861 and 1882. In at least two South American countries hydatids 

 are so common that the sanitary authorities have issued illustrated 

 placards warning against the disease. 



Over 240 cases of hydatid in man have been recorded from the 

 United States up to 1902. Over most of the United States hydatids 

 are comparatively infrequent in domestic animals, but they are not 

 so rare that they are curiosities to meat inspectors. Numerous con- 

 demnations of organs and parts of carcasses are reported every year 

 from the various meat-packing establishments under Federal inspec- 

 tion. Some recent abattoir figures show an alarming prevalence of 

 this disease in domestic animals in some parts of this country, notably 

 in certain localities in Virginia, Arkansas, and Oklahoma; and the 

 prevalence of hydatids in domestic animals is an index of the danger 

 to which people are exposed. It is, moreover, desirable that we apply 

 preventive measures before a larger list of cases in man makes both 

 curative and preventive measures imperative. The bare fact that 

 hydatids occur at all in the United States is of itself a cogent argu- 

 ment for the suppression of the dog nuisance as a measure necessary 

 for the public welfare. 



