No one, not even its most ardent advocate, would consider the official policy of wholesale slaughter of foot-and-mouth-diseased cattle an ideal means of combatting the disease. I believe it to be a policy of utter despair. The destruction of all cattle immediately they are found to be suffering from foot and mouth disease, was made compulsory in an effort to eliminate the disease from Britain, or at least to reduce the number of outbreaks. Far from having achieved this purpose it has had no effect on the number of animals slaughtered. Foot-and-mouth disease is as prevalent in Britain to-day as ever it was. In the six months November 1951 to May 1952, nearly 400 herds were slaughtered.

   My experience of dealing with animal disease makes me feel quite sure that this increase will continue in spite of the slaughter policy. Until it is recognized that the only defence against all disease is the development of natural immunity neither poleaxe nor hypodermic needle will help towards a solution. Health is not something which can be bought from the manufacturing chemist. It is the inevitable consequence of the natural life. Disease is not a devil that can be exorcised by magic potions or prevented by slaughter. It is the inevitable outcome of man's perversion of natural law.

   So serious are the dangers of foot-and-mouth disease to the future of the British livestock industry and the food of the nation that it is time Ministry of Agriculture officials took a more realistic attitude to the whole problem, shook themselves free of the shot-in-the-arm theory and took a look at nature.

   Is there any evidence of a possible answer to foot-and-mouth disease in nature? The disease is merely a bovine form of common influenza. If nothing at all is done for the cattle that get it, except to leave them alone, they recover in a few weeks. It has never been considered necessary to slaughter the Minister of Agriculture when he gets influenza, in order to save his staff. They who get it generally recover in spite of their unnatural lives. Cattle, too, will recover from foot and mouth disease far more easily than man recovers from the common cold provided they are given a natural chance.

   But there is no need to consider the question of curing the disease. It need never be.

   I have demonstrated that animals reared and fed exclusively on organically grown food can be given permanent immunity to Johne's disease and other so-called virus transmitted diseases; also that animals suffering from sterility and mastitis may quickly and cheaply be cured by simple herbal adjustments and a regime of organically grown food. Similarly, some work has already been done actually on foot-and-mouth disease which though by no means conclusive, or even scientific, gives at least some indication of the possibilities.

   Sir Albert Howard writes, in Farming and Gardening for Health or Disease, of his experiences with foot-and-mouth disease in India:

   '. . . I therefore put forward a request to have my own work cattle, so that my small farm of seventy-five acres could be a self-contained unit. I was anxious to select my own animals, to design their accommodation, and to arrange for their feeding, hygiene, and management. Then it would be possible to see: (1) what the effect of properly grown food would be on the well-fed working animal; and (2) how such livestock would react to infectious diseases. This request was refused several times on the ground that a research institute like Pusa should set an example of co-operative work rather than of individualistic effort. I retorted that agricultural advance had always been made by individuals rather than by groups and that the history of science proved conclusively that no progress had ever taken place without freedom. I did not get my oxen. But when I placed the matter before the Member of the Viceroy's Council in charge of agriculture (the late Sir Robert Carlyle, K.C.S.I.), I immediately secured his powerful support and was allowed to have charge of six pairs of oxen.

   'I had little to learn in this matter, as I belong to an old agricultural family and was brought up on a farm which had made for itself a local reputation for the management of cattle. My animals were most carefully selected for the work they had to do and for the local climate. Everything was done to provide them with suitable housing and with fresh green fodder, silage and grain, all produced from fertile soil. They soon got into good fettle and began to be in demand at the neighbouring agricultural shows, not as competitors for prizes, but as examples of what an Indian ox should look like. The stage was then set for the project I had in view, namely, to watch the reaction of these well-chosen and well-fed oxen to diseases like rinderpest, septicaemia, and foot-and-mouth disease, which frequently devastated the countryside and sometimes attacked the large herds of cattle maintained on the Pusa Estate. I always felt that the real cause of such epidemics was either starvation, due to the intense pressure of the bovine population on the limited food supply, or, when food was adequate, to mistakes in feeding and management. The working ox must always have not only good fodder and forage, but ample time for chewing the cud, for rest, and for digestion. The grain ration is also important, as well as a little fresh green food—all produced by intensive methods of farming. Access to clean fresh water must also be provided. The coat of the working animal must also be kept clean and free from dung.

   'The next step was to discourage the official veterinary surgeons, who often visited Pusa, from inoculating these animals with various vaccines and sera to ward off the common diseases. I achieved this by firmly refusing to have anything to do with such measures, at the same time asking these specialists to inspect my animals and to suggest measures to improve their feeding, management, and housing, so that my experiment could have the best possible chance of success. This carried the day. The veterinarians retired from the unequal contest and took no steps to compel me to adopt their remedies.

   'My animals then had to be brought in contact with diseased stock. This was done by allowing them: (1) to use the common pastures at Pusa, on which diseased cattle sometimes grazed, and (2) to come in direct contact with foot-and-mouth disease. This latter was easy, as my small farmyard was only separated from one of the large cattle sheds of the Pusa Estate by a low hedge, over which the animals could rub noses. I have often seen this occur between my oxen and foot-and-mouth cases. Nothing happened. The healthy, well-fed animals reacted to this disease exactly as suitable varieties of crops, when properly grown, did to insect and fungus pests—no infection took place. Neither did any infection occur as the result of my oxen using the common pastures. This experiment was repeated year after year between 1910 and 1923, when I left Pusa for Indore. A somewhat similar experience was repeated at Quetta between the years 1910 and 1918, but here I had only three pairs of oxen. As at Pusa, the animals were carefully selected and great pains were taken to provide them with suitable housing, with protection from the intense cold of winter, and with the best possible food. Again no precautions were taken against disease and no infection took place.'

   '. . . But this is not the whole of the foot-and-mouth story. When the 300 acres of land at Indore were taken over in the autumn of 1924, the area carried no fodder crops, so the feeding of forty oxen was at first very difficult. During the hot weather of 1925 these difficulties became acute. A great deal of heavy work was falling on the animals, whose food consisted of wheat straw, dried grass and millet stalks, with a small ration of crushed cotton seed. Such a ration might do for maintenance, but it was quite inadequate for heavy work. The animals soon lost condition and for the first and last time in my twenty-five years' Indore experience I had to deal with a few very mild cases of foot-and-mouth disease in the case of some dozen animals. The patients were rested for a fortnight and given better food, when the trouble disappeared never to return. But this warning stimulated everybody concerned to improve the hot-weather cattle ration and to secure a supply of properly made silage for 1926, by which time the oxen had recovered condition. From 1927 to 1931 these animals were often exhibited at agricultural shows as type specimens of what the local breed should be. They were also in great demand for the religious processions which took place in Indore city from time to time, a compliment which gave intense pleasure to the labour staff of the Institute.

   'This experience, covering a period of twenty-six years at three widely separated centres—Pusa in Bihar and Orissa, Quetta on the Western Frontier, and Indore in Central India—convinced me that foot-and-mouth disease is a consequence of malnutrition pure and simple, and that the remedies which have been devised in countries like Great Britain to deal with the trouble, namely the slaughter of the affected animals, are both superficial and also inadmissible. Such attempts to control an outbreak should cease. Cases of foot-and-mouth disease should be utilized to tune up practice and to see to it that the animals are fed on the fresh produce of fertile soil. The trouble will then pass and will not spread to the surrounding areas, provided the animals there are also in good fettle. Foot-and-mouth outbreaks are a sure sign of bad farming.

   'How can such preventive methods of dealing with diseases like foot-and-mouth be set in motion? Only by a drastic reorganization of present-day veterinary research. Instead of the elaborate and expensive laboratory investigations now in progress on this disease, which are not leading to any practical result, a simple preventive trial on the following lines should be started. An area of suitable land should first be got into first class condition by means of subsoiling, the reform of the manure heap, and reformed leys containing deep-rooting plants like lucerne, sainfoin, burnet, and chicory, and the various herbs needed to keep livestock in condition. The animals should be carefully selected to suit the local conditions and should first of all be got into first-class fettle by proper feeding and management. Everything will then be ready for a simple experiment in disease prevention. A few foot-and-mouth cases should be let loose among the herds, the reaction of both healthy and diseased animals being carefully watched. The diseased animals will soon recover. There will most likely be no infection of the healthy stock. At the worst there will only be the mildest possible attack which will disappear in a fortnight or so.'

   '. . . Foot-and-mouth is considered to be a virus disease. It could perhaps be more correctly described as a simple consequence of malnutrition, due either to the fact that the proteins of the food have not been properly synthesized, or to some obvious error in management. One of the most likely aggravations of the trouble is certain to be traced to the use of artificial manures instead of good old-fashioned muck or compost.'

   'It is time to view from a new angle the problem created by the infections that so often ravage our herds. Up to now in Europe we have spent large sums for medicines and vaccines with very poor results, especially so if one considers the renewed outbreaks of these same diseases. The fact that the live vaccines endanger the health of the animal and that lymphs have little practical use whilst contagious abortion, vaginitis and foot and mouth continue unrestricted makes one feel it is time to say enough! Let us try something else. Looking back and remembering that over thirty years ago I started rearing pigs naturally in the open air, thus eliminating completely from my pens all the diseases of pigs, I thought that it might be possible to arrive at similar results with cattle. Naturally these ideas of mine had to be tried out by a series of experiments and I decided to go ahead.

   'I chose a small uncovered yard and on the 17th October 1936 a Holstein bull calf was born in the open and was kept in the open air with no shelter whatsoever. Groups of control calves were also kept, some as are normally kept in Cremona, others in a semi open-air way. All the calves were fed the same way and the control groups were inoculated with serum and vaccines. It was found that the Martyr, as the experimental calf was named, required from the first days less food than the others although he showed more energy and vitality and more growth than the control calves. The Metereological Observatory of Cremona supplied details of the weather records:

   'October. Varied with two days of fog and two clear days.

   'November. Foggy. Four days of rain and the temperature below zero centograde.

    'December. Foggy. Three days of snow. Nine days of continued rain.

    'January. Ten days of snow. Many frosts. Three days clear. The rest foggy.

   'February. Similar.

   'The calf from a purely milk diet had passed on to solid food, but required much less food than the control calves. So much so, that I began to wonder if the fresh air and natural life facilitates the production of blood and a better assimilation of foods, whilst the animals kept under artificial conditions require more food to produce those anti-bodies so necessary for their life's fight. Although the calf had not been inoculated with the usual serums and vaccines he continued in good health, whilst several of the control calves died of pneumonia and all developed the usual cough and showed the yellowish viscid mucus at the nostrils that always afflicts my calves. The calf was permanently kept in the open air whilst we waited for foot-and-mouth to break out so as to prove if the natural existence would make the animal more or less immune. On the 6th February 1938, when the Martyr was over a year old he was taken to a farm at Basiglio where foot-and-mouth had broken out. The Martyr was kept in the farmyard until 7th March 1938, always, of course, in the open air and in contact with the farm employees. From here he was taken to another infected farm at S. Vito di Gaggjano where he not only lived amongst infected animals but was allowed to serve 10 infected cows who lived with him in his paddock at the height of the infection. He remained here until 8th April 1938 and was then taken to a farm at Chiaravalle, also infected with foot-and-mouth where the experiment was carried a step further, and on the 9th and 10th April the lips and tongue of the bull were smeared with saliva taken from infected animals. After all this he did not contract the disease and he returned home on the 17th May 1938 in perfect health.'

   The official slaughter policy at present denies the opportunity of similar experiments in this country. But the combination of my own successes with other diseases and the reports quoted from Sir Albert Howard and the Marquis Stanga are surely enough to warrant the commencement of similar official experiments to decide once and for ever whether it is really possible in this country to rear animals economically in such a way as to give them natural immunity to foot-and-mouth disease.

   I would willingly provide from my own herd some cattle of third generation naturally-bred and organically-reared, for an experiment of this kind, if the Ministry of Agriculture would allow me to supervise their feeding and management throughout the experiment.

   Will the Ministry continue to ignore such a proposal which can cost the nation but a minute fraction of the present research into animal diseases, and may produce an answer to one of the greatest agricultural problems of all time? There is nothing—not even face—to lose, except in refusing my offer. 


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