Similarly, foreign animal diseases have been spread from some small 
beginning, such as an infected cow added to a dairy herd or the use of 
meat scraps from ships’ garbage as an uncooked feed for livestock, To 
show the importance of animal inspection and livestock protection, a few 
case histories of animal diseases are cited in the following paragraphs. 
They include some diseases that the United States has never had, or has 
successfully wiped out. But all are causing destruction in some parts of 
the world, and it could happen here. 
Contagious bovine pleuropneumonia was the first livestock-killing 
disease to rouse the United States to united action on the animal disease 
front. In 1843, a ‘‘bargain’’ cow from Europe brought the organism that 
causes this lung-sickness of cattle. A New York milkman innocently 
bought the ailing cow from a British ship captain and from this small 
beginning the disease spread through valuable herds, Additional cattle 
importations from Europe are known to have further established this 
disease in the United States. By the 1880's, European countries were re- 
fusing to buy our cattle or beef because of the danger of spreading the 
disease, 
Facing this trade crisis, Congress in 1884 established the Bureau of 
Animal Industry in the U.S. Department of Agriculture--with its first 
assignment that of stamping out contagious bovine pleuropneumonia,. The 
same year, Congress established the first Federal quarantine law for 
detaining and testing livestock that enter or leave the United States, It 
cost the U. S. Government five years’ workand more than a million dollars 
to eradicate pleuropneumonia. Since then, our livestock growers have 
never had to fight this disease, although it remains prevalent in cattle of 
some foreign countries, and therefore a constant threat. 
Cattle tick fever (pyroplasmosis) got into the United States in Spanish 
colonial times, with livestock brought from the West Indies and Mexico. 
The fever spread gradually when sickened cattle were moved on foot, and 
faster when railroads began hauling livestock. Eventually, tick fever made 
cattle raising impractical in the South. The only clue to the cause of the 
disease was that a particular kind of tick was found where the disease 
occurred, 
Early in its history, the Bureau of Animal Industry began a study of 
this tick, The scientists found that when one of these bloodsucking fever 
ticks bit an infected animal, the ticktookup parasites that are the cause of 
the disease, Later, if the same tick bit a healthy animal, it transferred 
fever parasites to this animal’s blood. For fifty years, cattle growers 
have had to spend time and money ridding animals of the cattle fever tick 
by dipping and spraying treatments. The tick has been virtually eliminated 
from the United States, but at times it is found infesting some herd and 
necessitates swift quarantine and eradication measures. Many times each 
year, the cattle fever tick is caught hitchhiking on various species of 
animals that arrive for inspection and quarantine at one of the United 
States ports of entry for livestock, 
Foot-and-mouth disease and rinderpest are often mentioned together 
because they are alike in some ways. When the worst-feared animal dis - 
eases on earth are cited, these two generally head the list. Both are 
virus-caused, Both have thus far defied research efforts to find a satis- 
factory cure. 
