488 VETEEINAEY HYGIENE 



circle can only be made by the authority of the Board, 

 which can also cancel the holding of any fair, market, or 

 sale of animals within an infected area. 



Where two or more circles infected with the same disease 

 overlap each other, the whole may be declared one infected 

 circle. 



All persons, excepting those authorized by law, may be 

 forbidden to enter any building where diseased animals are 

 kept, and of which the place has been declared infected. 

 The owner's notice to this effect affixed to the entrance of 

 the building or enclosure is effective in law, but the local 

 authorities can also earmark the place. 



There are several sections in the Act we have not 

 touched on — viz., Compensation for Slaughter ; Foreign 

 Animals ; Local Authorities, their General Provisions and 

 Expenses ; Offences and Legal Proceedings ; Special 

 Provisions referring to Scotland and Ireland ; also a great 

 many regulations dealing with Cattle Plague, Pleuro- 

 pneumonia, Foot and Mouth Disease, and Swine Fever. 



Some of these, and the various Orders of the Board 

 under the Act bearing on disease, will be noticed in 

 connection with each malady. 



The Acts and Orders are drawn up by the law officers of 

 the Crown, but no amount of careful reading of an Order 

 can take the place of common-sense. This is evident in 

 the narrow interpretation by local authorities and lay 

 inspectors as to what constitutes an ' in-contact,' the lay- 

 man's idea being that the animals must actually touch each 

 other! Nothing but skilled advice backed by experience 

 can here be of any value. Pigs, for example, diseased and 

 healthy, might conceivably be only a foot apart and the 

 healthy run no risk, or they might be twenty or thirty yards 

 apart and the healthy run every chance of infection. An 

 example of the first would be two styes in different yards 

 with a brick wall separating them, and of the second two 

 styes in the same yard, the excreta from that containing 

 diseased swine being washed into the other by rain, or 

 carried on the boots and clothes of attendants. 



Digitized by Microsoft® 



