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‘Partnership’ in Action: Contagious Abortion and the Governance of Livestock Disease in Britain, 1885–1921

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Abstract

Most histories of livestock disease in Britain treat the development of control policy as a government responsibility, to which farmers made little constructive contribution. Similarly, farmers rarely appear in accounts of disease research. This paper uses the example of contagious abortion (brucellosis) at the turn of the twentieth century to reveal that state-farming collaboration in research and policy did in fact occur, and that it operated in various ways, with often unexpected outcomes. The collaborative approach to contagious abortion is partly attributed to its clinical and epidemiological features, which made it an unsuitable candidate for the existing, state-led policy of stamping out disease. It is claimed that such collaboration has been overlooked by historians on account of their focus upon diseases that were amenable to stamping out. This focus needs to change if history is to inform present-day disease governance in Britain, which is founded on the concept of ‘partnership’ between farmers and the state.

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Notes

  1. Examples include the war-time ‘scheme for the control of certain diseases of dairy cows’ (Woods 2007); the pig health scheme (1960s), fowl pest vaccination campaign (1970s), and Aujesky’s disease control (1980s). It is also important to note that for diseases such as swine fever, brucellosis and tuberculosis, stamping out in the later twentieth century was preceded by a period of vaccination and/or diagnostic testing. The Reports of the Chief Veterinary Officer (published under various titles, including Annual report of proceedings under the disease of animals acts and Animal Health Services Report).

  2. While it would be valuable to direct my key question (are existing histories of livestock disease control equipped to inform present-day disease governance?) to contexts other than Britain, it is unfortunately not possible within the confines of this paper. Comparative perspectives would prove extremely valuable, as stamping out was not as central to the disease control efforts of many European countries, and disease governance often followed a quite different trajectory.

  3. References to this work are scattered throughout the societies’ journals in the second half of the nineteenth century.

  4. John McFadyean (1853–1941) was the son of a Scottish farmer. He studied veterinary medicine at the Royal (Dick) Veterinary College, Edinburgh, and taught anatomy there from 1876 to 1891.Inspired by reports of Koch’s work on anthrax, he decided to advance his scientific training by studying medicine at Edinburgh University. In 1892 he was appointed lecturer in pathology and bacteriology at the Royal Veterinary College, London, and became principal in 1894, a post he held until his retirement in 1927. Described by his biographer as the ‘founder of modern veterinary research’ he undertook multiple enquiries into a range of livestock diseases. He founded the Journal of Comparative Pathology and Therapeutics in 1888, and was knighted in 1905 (Pattison 1981).

  5. The Brown did, however, undertake enquiries on behalf of the RASE during the later 1870s and 1880s when the RASE, frustrated by the RVC’s lack of activity, temporarily diverted its annual research grant (Veterinary Committee 1875).

  6. For a discussion of these terms and their application within medicine, see Hamlin 1992.

  7. The historical literature exploring scientists’ efforts to win state support for research is summarized in Olby 1991, pp. 510–511.

  8. Stockman was experienced in both bacteriological research and legislative disease control. He had studied under McFadyean at Edinburgh; took over his classes in pathology and bacteriology at the Edinburgh Veterinary School upon McFadyean’s 1892 move to the RVC and went on to marry his daughter. He had also worked for the Indian Civil Department on cattle plague control, 1902–1903, and as principal veterinary officer in the Transvaal, 1903–1904 (Obituary 1926).

  9. This occurred in 1896, when the BA appointed a committee to consider the aetiology, pathology and morbid anatomy of swine fever, and in 1903, when a similar committee was set up to investigate glanders and the diagnostic and therapeutic properties of mallein (Anon 1965).

  10. Stockman was engaged in a campaign to displace lay administrators from their positions of power within the diseases of animals division of the Board of Agriculture. By pursuing and drawing on the findings of scientific research, he attempted to argue that disease control was an essentially veterinary affair that should be directed by vets not administrators. Woods, Abigail (in prep), ‘Defining the boundaries of veterinary expertise: Contagious disease control at the British Board of Agriculture, 1890–1922’.

  11. It later moved to Weybridge and became the Central Veterinary Laboratory. It still exists today, as part of the Veterinary Laboratories Agency.

  12. Cheshire was the county where dairying was the most established, with a density of 200.3 cows per acre by 1900 (Brown 1987, p. 48).

  13. Measures aimed to prevent the sale of bTB-infected milk and to destroy clinically affected cows (Waddington 2006, p. 165–174).

  14. A field station for the testing of brucellosis vaccines was eventually founded under the ARC at Compton in 1936 (DeJager 1993).

  15. Statistics drawn from Annual Report of the Chief Veterinary Officer. Despite support for vaccination, it was a far from universal measure. Most of the 3 million dairy cows in Britain did not receive it. Their owners continued to rely on the control methods identified in the late nineteenth century by the agricultural societies (Woods 2007, pp. 466–468).

  16. Correspondence in NA MH 55/310, MAF 189/223.

  17. It might be expected that latitude was also possible in research because contagious abortion was not perceived to affect human health. In fact, a similar degree of latitude is apparent in the RC’s enquiries into bTB, which was strongly suspected as a human health risk. (1890–1895, 1896–1898 and 1901–1907).

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the Wellcome Trust for funding this research, which formed part of a post-doctoral project on the veterinary medicalization of cattle breeding. I would also like to thank Nick Wright and David Edgerton for commenting on drafts of this article, and Phillip Lowe for posing the question, ‘where are the farmers in veterinary history?’

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  1. Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, Level 2 Central Library, Imperial College London, South Kensington Campus, London, SW7 2AZ, UK

    Abigail Woods

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Woods, A. ‘Partnership’ in Action: Contagious Abortion and the Governance of Livestock Disease in Britain, 1885–1921. Minerva 47, 195–216 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-009-9123-5

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