84 BOVINE TUBERCULOSIS AND OTHER CATTLE DISEASES. 



It is the purpose here merely to allude to the matter of 

 control of bovine tuberculosis. When municipalities interfere 

 with dairymen in the tuberculosis matter, the cry is usually 

 raised that nothing should be done until indemnification is 

 available. Under the conditions ordinarily imposed by a city 

 ordinance, such a claim is absurd. 



The slaughter-house always offers an opportunity for the dis- 

 posal of tubercular animals. The regulations of the Bureau 

 of Animal Industry of the United States Department of Agri- 

 culture permit the veterinary inspectors to pass certain slightly 

 diseased carcasses as fit for human food. In most of our abat- 

 toirs there is no inspection of meat by Federal or local author- 

 ities, consequently we consume regularly the flesh of broken- 

 down tubercular dairy cows. In view of this, the slaughter of 

 slightly diseased cows that have merely reacted to the test, 

 cannot be regarded as especially disgusting. The slaughter of 

 reacting 'COWS does not afford a great loss to the dairyman, for 

 at certain seasons of the year there is not a wide margin of 

 difference between the beef and the dairy value of a scrub cow. 



It is by no means a simple matter to enforce the clauses of 

 an ordinance requiring that reacting animals be permanently 

 removed from the herd. Unfortunately it is quite necessary 

 to assume that condemned cows may be returned to the herd 

 by stealth. Thorough inspections, with the aid of the identifi- 

 cation system, will quite prevent the general practice of such 

 fraud. An instance has come to notice where the owner was so 

 deaf to warning and so blind to the truth regarding, the trans- 

 missibility of tuberculosis that he kept the reacting cows to 

 suckle dairy calves. 



Instances arise in which the dairyman, having dried off a 

 number of reacting cows, keeps them at pasture a year and 

 submits them for a retest later. In general such animals will 

 continue to react from year to year, although some may cease 

 to react because of the encasulation of the lesions. Such 

 animals unless very closely supervised, are not desirable in a 

 herd free from tuberculosis. There is, furthermore, the great 

 probability that the owner will tamper with the reacting cows 

 by surreptitiously injecting them with tuberculin with the 



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