§ SIR JOHN LENGI beg to ask the President of the Board of Agriculture whether his attention has been drawn to the Veterinary Surgeon's Report for the year 1901 to the Corporation of Glasgow, showing that, of 46,784 homebred cattle slaughtered in that year, 6,332, or 13.53, were found affected with tuberculosis, while amongst 49,881 Canadian and States cattle the number was only 66, or 13; and whether, seeing that in the million and a half of Canadian and States cattle killed in this country since 1892, the rate is about one in 4,000, while it has been ascertained that among the home cattle killed in Glasgow one in every seven or eight is tubercular, and that foreign buyers have demanded tests for tuberculosis in all the breeding animals they have bought in this country, he will propose measures to diminish the prevalence of tuberculosis in our home cattle, and to raise their health to the Canadian standard.
§ MR. HANBURYI have seen the Report to which the hon. Member refers. Its author attributes the comparative freedom from bovine tuberculosis of Canadian and United States cattle to the more nautral life which they lead in their native country, a condition which it would not be possible, I am afraid, to reproduce in its entirety at home. Some advance has, however, been made in this direction by the enactment of suitable regulations with regard to the ventilation of cowsheds, but the making of such regulations rests with the various local authorities, and their confirmation is in the hands of the Local Government Board, and not of my own Department.