Bismarck daily tribune. [volume] (Bismarck, Dakota [N.D.]) 1881-1916, 1914-12-22
FOOT AND MOUTH
DISEASE DESCRIBED
Dread Animal Plague Has Cost
United States a Great Deal
Already.

van
Union StCckyards in Chicago for ten
days from November ) to November
l6 is not only a story illustrating the
contagious characteristic of foot and
mouth disease, but will serve to show
the typical methods used by the Fed
eral government and the infected
states for suppression.
The Union Yards have an area of
five hundred acres, three hundred
miles of railroad track, thirteen thou
sand pens and a daily capacity of sew.
enty-five thousand cattle, three hun
dred thousand hogs, one hundred and
twenty-five thousand sheep and six
thousand horses. The average daily
receipts CT cattle there are valued at
more than a million dollars.
The American and English method
of suppression-that of slaughter and
disinfection-was put into effect in
the many states to which the disease
had spread from the Chicago center
and in the Chicago yards, which had
been closed.
Nine hundred cattle were slaughter
ed at the Union S~tockyards alone. A
steam shovel in transit was halted
and dug a great graye-wide and deep
The dead animals were dumped in,
covered with lime and burned. For
the first time in the half century OF
the yards history the pens were clear
ed; not a hoof stood within the five
hundred acres For ten days this con.
tinued. Under government supervi.
sion the disinfecting began. 1t cost in
labor, materials and loss of business
to the yards, shippers and consignees,
probably over a quarter of a million
dollars. The cost of the work was es'
timated at yer sixty thousand dol.
lars. The water system Of the yards
was converted in:oNa conduit system
for hyper-chloride of lime, and TWEEN.
ty-five thousand dollars. worth of this
disinfectant was used in washing out
the pens. Following this bath, cresol
was sprayed over and in the yards,
pens. hog and sheep houses, by pres
sure from the air-compressor plant.
Roofs, floors, ceilings, were wet
down; lime was spread upon The
floors of all passageways. It took a
force of nearly eighteen hundred men
nine days to do the work, and at last,
On November 16, the yards were open
ed for business again, subject to the
order that no live cattle should be
shipped out.
England required nearly fifty years
20 rid herself Of this plague. The last
| epizootic form of the hoOf and mouth
disease on the continent came from
Russia in 1886. Four years later sta,
tistics collected in the German Empire
showed that nearly half a million head
of cattle, more than a quarter-million
of sheep and goats, and more than a
sixth of a million of swine were vic.
tins of the disease. In 1871 the infec-
ton cost France over seven million;
in 1883 England stood a loss of five
million dollars. The greatest losses,
it must be remembered, are not in
animal mortality, but in loss of weight,
diminished milk supply, aborted preg'
nancy and permanent after-effects re
naming when the active disease it.
se.f has gone.
DR.. Cope, of the British Board OF
Agriculture, said at the International
Congress of Veterinary Surgeons al
Baden.Baden: ct is true that the foot
md mouth disease rarely. assumes a
fatal character, but the fact that near
" all classes CT animals on the farms
are susceptible renders the indirect
losses much greater in the case Of
foot and mouth disease than in rim
derpest of pleuro-pneumonia, which
only affect cattle. In my country
where it existed for at least fifty
years, it caused enormous loss-great
err than that of all the contagious di
seases of animals combined"
DR.. Lceffler, an authority, says:
Foot and mouth disease is spreading
more and more every year, and every
year it costs the German Empire
enormous sums. Necessary measures
had been taken with the Creates
care; suspected grounds had beer
closely quarantined; this measure hat
been extended to whole communes
and ever to entire districts; disinfec
tion had been carried out carefully
and, Notwithstanding all this. the oil
sease kept spreading
For eight years England barred tn
Importation of all cattle from coun
tries where the disease was known u
have a foothold.