Askov American. [volume] (Askov, Pine County, Minn.) 1914-current, 1927-05-12
CONCERNING T. B.
TESTING OF CATTLE

avail to test cattle for tubercu-
losis is a question that has been
debated pro and con many places
and it appears to be a disputed
question. Out in Lincoln county
farmers who have organized for
the purpose of getting the area
test law amended or repealed
continue to gather signatures to
petition that is to be presented
to the legislature at future date.
A Pine county reader of the
American who is interested in the
subject has handed in an article
for publication. 1t is from the
Renville County Republic and
reads as follows:
While the Iowa legislatures lower
house passes a bill forbidding the
area test, the Minnesota lower house
passes bill which calls for an an
nual appropriation of 100000 for
1927 and authorized certificate of in
debtedness of 100000 at the rate of
100000 a year.
7 A special levy will also be made
to provide 100000 year in addition
which makes it possible for the state
sanitary board to spend 100000 for
testing in the next five years.
This is without question the rank
est piece of legislation that has been
passed by our legislature in recent
years.
The eradication of bovine tubercu-
losis cannot be accomplished in five
years or a hundred years. There is
stacks of reliable authorities in sup
port of this statement. There are
psychologists by the score who will
come forward and prove beyond the
preadventure of doubt that bovine
tuberculosis is not the cause of con-
sumption in human beings.
They are also willing and competent
to prove that the indiscriminate use
of tuberculin by the state veterinarian
is menace to the health of swine and
poultry on those premises where test
ing is persisted in.
Should this or any legislation ap-
propriate a sufficient fund to investi-
gate the reliability of the tuberculin
test for tuberculosis in cattle and
eliminate all politics from the pro-
position, the area test with all of it's
humbuggery would soon be a thing
of the past. 1t is now up to the far
mers of the state to organize against
this vicious and malicious propaganda
and put stop to the practice of mis-
representing the facts concerning the
testing of dairy and beef cattle. The
Land O'Lakes Creamery Association
and Farm Bureau should be COM
PEELED to prove the necessity of pas
teurizing milk and the use of tuber-
culin which is supposed to detect tu-
berculosis but which in reality only
poisons the cattle and adds to the
danger rather than to eliminate it.
We challenge the state sanitary
board, the farm bureau, and the Land
OIakes association to fair and par
tial discussion of this question before
a fair and impartial committee or in
the daily press. We dare them to
come forward and discuss it and leave
their miserable political chicanery
out of it. They would be beaten al
most before they start and they know
it. They know that as long as the
public remains in ignorance that they
are safe to ply their nefarious scheme
to subvert the taxpayers money and
hold before them the bug-aboo of the
great white plague which is not now
or ever was, directly or indirectly,
caused by drinking the milk or eating
the flesh of cattle infected with tu-
berculosis. 1t is inconceivable that
a given number of intelligent repre-
sentatives in our legislature would
deliberately pass without opposition a
bill to appropriate money to an organ
lied set of shysters who know that
the money so appropriated cannot pos
sibly. serve the purpose for which it