The Vermont watchman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1883-1911, 1894-10-24
To the Farmers of Vermont.

j
established Vermont is an agrcul-
tura state. Dairying is her create st
interest. Anything that affects this
great interest adversely brings loss to
the farmers; anything that contributes
to its good repute helps to bring pros
perity.
The presence of disease of any kind,
in any form, to any extent, among the
cattle of Vermont must injuriously
affect the people at home, farmers
families included, in the vital matter of
health; it affects the farmer directly in
the loss of valuable stock, and it affects
him in the bad reputation the states
dairy products must gain in the public
markets and among the individual con-
sumers of those products in adjoining
states.
Consumption is the mortal foe Of the
inhabitants of this northern region
They dread tas an implacable enemy and
flee from it as from the wrath to come.
1t is enough for them that climatic con-
ditions may be in league with the dis
ease. These they cannot change ex-
cept by emigration, but when it comes
to drinking in the living germs of the
disea>e with lhe milk they consume,
devouring them with the butter and
cheese they eat, the beef the butcher
sells, they encounter deadly conditions
human agency can deal with and can
remedy. Consumption, called tubercu-
losis, exists among the cattle of the
state. The disease is identical with
human consumption. The living germs
of the disease exist in uncooked milk.
They are not destroyed by the process
OF cheese and butter making. Roasted
beef is poisoned by them. All thes
products of animals having tuberculosis
are absolutely unfit for human con-
sumption. They expose the human
consumer to deadly disease. Swine
fed on the milk of tuberculous COWS be-
come inoculated with the dread disease.
There is a widespread alarm over the
existence of tuberculosis and the conse-
quent tainting of dairy products. The
individual farmer who can exhibit a
clean bill of health for his cows will
very plainly find an eager market for
his milk or butter or beef. The farmer
who SHES at the application of the one
known and certain test that shall deter
mine whether his cows are diseased or
healthy will become the object of sus-
picion. A state like Vermont, an asso-
citation of dairymen, that takes vigorous
and effective means TO purify its herds,
that can hold up to the world a clean bill
of health for al its dairies, which it can
attest to-putting this matter down on
to the sordid basis Of a matter of dol
lars and cents - will make the best
purely commercial advertisement to all
the world that can be devised.
Vermont is small, compact state
The examination of all its dairies is en-
tirely practicable. Its economic bear
iugs alone demand that such an exam
ination be made; and when to these is
added the vital considerations affect
ing the public health, there is no rea-
son or argument that any person hav-
ing spark of manhood or breath of
humanity can make against a PROPOSE
ton that the state at once undertake
the work of purging its stables of this
menace TO the health of the people at
large, and the prosperity of the farming
class in particular.
This work must be done under a
special law of the state. 1t is the i'm
perative duty of the legislature now in
session to prepare and enact law that
shall seek effectively and speedily to
accomplish this publication. The law
should have spinal column-its YER
teb e made of bone, not gristle. No
halfway measure will answer the pur-
pose. Examination aud testing in some
effective form should be compulsory,
and the animals condemned should be
slaughtered. They should be placed
beyond the possibility of sale to butch
ers or to other darymen. Sales of this
kind by farmers who are not too scru'
puluus is one of the enormties of the
existing status. Such sales send to the
shambes cattle it should be a crime tC
slaughter for beef, or they Introduce
contagion into the herds of farmers
upon whom they are Willingly imposed
AS a matter having vital bearing
upon the public health, it is just tina
- oeo onip,alo NAV he ron