VETERINARY LEGISLATION AND ORGANISATION OF VETERINARY SUPERVISION IN THE POLISH LANDS FROM 1774 TO 1918 Jarosław Sobolewski Department of Public Health Protection and Animal Welfare, Institute of Veterinary Medicine, Nicolaus Copernicus University ul. Lwowska 1, 87-100 Torun, Poland; jsobolewski@umk.pl SUMMARY The first Polish legal regulations on veterinary medicine date back to the second half of the 18th century. In 1774, a parliamentary constitution was passed obliging doctors to supervise hospital revirs in order to prevent the spread of cattle and sheep blight. In 1780, the Royal Commission of Good Order issued 46 laws regulating the slaughter of animals and the meat trade. The period of the Duchy of Warsaw brought the first normative act devoted exclusively to aspects of animal health protection - the 'Regulations for the Rescue of Horned Cattle in Present Diseases, together with Measures Sufficient to Safeguard them from Immediate Multiplication of Mortality'. In 1844, the 'Veterinary Police Act' was issued in Warsaw. This was the first piece of legislation detailing the scope of tasks performed by the state administration bodies responsible for veterinary matters. At the time of the loss of statehood in the Polish lands, the law of the partitioners was in force. The veterinary service on Polish soil at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries developed differently in each of the three partitions, which also applied to legal regulations. Regaining independence in 1918 led to the unification of the functioning of the veterinary administration and the introduction of new legal solutions. Key words: veterinary law, history of veterinary medicine, infectious diseases of animals The organisation of veterinary supervision of animal husbandry and, in particular, the prevention of the spread of infectious diseases and the protection of public health in the context of food of animal origin, has quite a long history and dates back to before the establishment of organised veterinary education, i.e. before 1762, when the College of Veterinary Medicine was founded in Lyon (France). From the beginning, these activities were based on the premise of an administrative-veterinary police force, which is still the case today. The tasks of such an organisation were and are to protect public welfare and safety in the broadest sense [1]. The administrative apparatus organised in this way uses tools to influence the economic sphere especially in terms of rationing and regulation, and from the point of view of the application of the law - supervision, control and enforcement of the law in force [2]. In Poland, the first police agenda appeared during the Four-Year Sejm as one of the five departments of the Permanent Council. The competence of the police included, among other things, the activities of supervising hygienic and health conditions in the country [3]. The first legal regulations date back to the second half of the 18th century. In 1774, a parliamentary constitution was enacted, which was part of the above-mentioned agenda and obliged doctors and feldspersons to supervise hospital revirs in order to prevent the spread of cattle and sheep pestilence [4]. In 1780, the Royal Commission of Good Order issued 46 laws regulating the slaughter of animals and the meat trade. This was a set of laws significantly restricting the guild monopoly, as well as regulating the slaughtering of animals and sanitary supervision of the quality of animal raw materials on offer [5]. Despite the introduction of the aforementioned regulations, the manner in which they were respected appeared to be