49

A.—2

without first being thoroughly disinfected. Arrangements were also made with the proprietors of the Penrith Auction Mart for the exclusion from the market to be held the following day of any cattle or sheep from the neighbourhood. The Board's Inspector arrived on the farm early on Monday morning, the 24th June. He confirmed the local Inspector's diagnosis of foot-and-mouth disease ; sixteen cows were by that time showing typical symptoms, and steps were immediately taken for the slaughter not only of those animals, but of all others which had been in recent contact with them. An Order under the Diseases of Animals Acts was immediately issued and communicated by telegram to the local authority prohibiting under heavy penalties the movement of animals in a wide area of country, approximately thirty miles in diameter, around the infected place. There was no clue to the origin of of the infection, and the Board deemed it advisable to send a warning telegram to every local authority —330 in all —throughout the country. On Monday night the chief veterinary officer of the Board travelled north in order to visit the scene of operations, and he satisfied himself that everything possible had been done to prevent the disease from spreading to other premises. On Thursday, the 27th June, telegrams were received from two veterinary Inspectors at Liverpool, reporting that they had seen lesions of suspected foot-and-mouth disease in the tongues and feet of bullocks slaughtered the day before in the abattoir. The animals had come from Ireland, and had been exposed for sale, along with some 1,100 other cattle and 9,000 sheep, in Stanley Market, Liverpool, on Monday, the 24th June. Stanley Market is a great distributing centre for cattle and sheep, especially those imported from Ireland, and by Thursday the animals exposed in the market on Monday had been dispersed in all directions. Within a few hours of the receipt of the telegram above mentioned the chief veterinary officer of the Board was at Liverpool, and had informed the Board by telephone that there was no doubt about the accuracy of the diagnosis. Steps were taken to trace back the diseased bullocks to their place of origin in Ireland ; inquiries very quickly proved that they had been part of a consignment of sixty-two cattle and 168 sheep shipped on the 22nd June by a well-known Dublin dealer. With this information before them, the Board issued an order on the 28th June prohibiting the landing of any Irish animals in Great Britain. Inspectors were also told off to trace to their respective destinations all the sixty thousand animals which had recently been landed in Great Britain from Ireland ; this work was completed in a remarkably short space of time, and arrangements made for the animals to be kept under strict veterinary supervision. The same day they were informed by the local authority's Inspector of another outbreak in the outskirts of Liverpool among cattle which also had formed part of the same dealer's consignment; on the 29th June foot-and-mouth disease was confirmed at Harraby, near Carlisle, among Irish cattle which were known to have been shipped from Dublin to Holyhead on the 22nd June. There was no room for doubt that the infection had come from Ireland. Animals which had been in contact with those affected in the Harraby outbreak were believed to have gone to Gateshead, to Morpeth, and possibly to York. Inspectors were immediately sent to trace them to their destination. During the next three days news was received that fresh centres of disease existed in the West Riding of Yorkshire, and on two farms within a few miles of Morpeth. The outlook was grave, for it was clear that the germs of the disease had been scattered over a wide area; it was impossible at that moment to see where it would end ; but the Board hoped that by unremitting energy and the imposition of rigorous restrictions whenever a new outbreak was reported the disease could be isolated, and prevented from spreading into the surrounding district. The great annual show of the Royal Agricultural Society of England was fixed for the week beginning the 30th June, at Doncaster, in Yorkshire. On the eve of the show the Board felt themselves obliged to prohibit the exhibition of cattle, sheep, goats, and swine ; those which had already arrived were sent back after veterinary inspection to the places whence they came, there to be kept under careful observation. One lot of Irish animals arrived at the show-ground ; it was ascertained that they had been carried from Dublin to Holyhead by the same vessel (though a day or two later) which had carried the cattle subsequently found at Harraby to be affected with foot-and-mouth disease; further, they had come from premises only three miles from Swords, in County Dublin, where the Irish authorities had just discovered cases of the disease. The Board held that the risk of keeping these animals alive was too great to be incurred, and their immediate slaughter was ordered. During the last days of June and up to the 3rd July thirty-two suspected outbreaks had been reported, of which twenty-two —in Cumberland, Lancashire, Cheshire, Yorkshire, Northumberland, and Durham —were confirmed, all directly traceable to Ireland. All affected animals and those which had been in recent contact with them were immediately slaughtered, and orders were issued absolutely prohibiting any movement of animals within about fifteen miles of each outbreak. In some districts also — e.g., in Northumberland, where the disease appeared to have obtained a firm hold —restrictions were imposed upon the holding of markets even outside the scheduled areas. In another week the number of confirmed outbreaks had risen to forty-two, for the most part in Northumberland, but some few also in Lancashire and Yorkshire. At this time—viz., about the 10th July—there was a band of country, thirty miles wide at the narrowest point, stretching from Liverpool on the west to Hull on the east, in which no animal could be moved from one field into another on the opposite side of a road without a special license, which was granted only in exceptional cases, and safeguarded by every imaginable precaution. Not only the Inspectors of the Board and the local authorities, but the whole Police Force in the scheduled areas watched night and day to see that their restrictions were not evaded. These drastic measures soon began to show good results. The epidemic still spread, but not with the same alarming rapidity as at first, and by degrees the authorities got the upper hand. By the end of July fifty-nine outbreaks had been confirmed, by the end of August seventy, by the end of September eighty-one. One more case occurred on the Bth October in Northumberland, and one nearly two months later, on the Ist December, in Kent, the latter apparently not connected in any way with the earlier outbreaks. There has been no case at all since the Ist December, 1912,

7—A, 2,