The Eradication of Tuberculosis in Cattle. Disease in Relation to Animal Husbandry

Abstract

DURING the last century there have been enormous develooments in the characters of livestock. With improved capacity to grow and store foodstuffs, together with changes in the nature of the fodder grown, there has been a revolution in animal husbandry. Improved breeds with characters particularly valuable to the community have been evolved. Stocking has become heavier, animals which mature much more quicKly than tneir ancestors have developed and their production has reached standards which are out of all proportion to what might be regarded as natural for living creatures. Animals have become machines with a standard of efficiency that even engineers might envy. In selecting animals for breeding the aim has been to produce particular characters, for example, special capacity for production, such as milk yield or carcase type; at the same time stamina and disease resistance have been neglected. Consequently, the environment and systems of husbandry have tended to produce a high disease hazard, which the animal has a limited capacity to withstand unless it is given the extensive protection of such measures as are available from veterinary science. Infective disease of the chronic insidious endemic type, such as tuberculosis, has proved to be much more difficult to control than the acute plagues, even after its nature was understood. © 1945, The Royal Society of Medicine. All rights reserved.