§ SIR W. J. COLLINS (St. Pancras, W.)To ask the hon. Member for South Somerset, as representing the President of the Board of Agriculture, if he will publish the results of the recent investigations of the veterinary officers of the Board into the nature of swine fever with a view to its prevention; whether the pathology of swine fever shows it to be a disease against which the methods of slaughter, disinfection, etc., successfully employed against other epizootics, can be employed with similarly good results; and, if not, whether the Board considered the large expenditure involved in carrying out such methods in the case of swine fever is warranted.
(Answered by Sir Edward Strachey.) Full particulars of the investigations to which my hon. friend refers will be published as part of the Annual Report of the chief veterinary officer. The success of stamping out a disease by slaughter 1292 and disinfection, etc., does not depend so much on its pathology as upon its epizootiology, and the epizootiology of swine fever renders it very doubtful whether wholesale slaughter of affected and contact animals is a practicable undertaking. The Board do not consider that the large expenditure that would be involved in carrying out such an operation would be justified.