British Mandate: A Survey of Palestine: Volume I - Page 328

CHAPTER IX.

28. The climate also varies greatly from the heat of the Jordan valley to the coolness of the Judaean hills and appears to have an influence on the incidence of certain diseases, such as the tickborne infections especially prevalent in the Jordan valley and eastern end of the plain of Esdraelon.

29. Associated with the rapid expansion of Jewish agricultural settlement and especially of the dairy and poultry industries. there has been very considerable introduction of pure-bred stock and resultant establishment of large and valuable grade herds and flocks. Particularly in the case of Friesian cattle, the introduction of a breed evolved from an environment much different in climate and disease-incidence to Palestine conditions has resulted in considerable susceptibility to local diseases, especially tick-borne infections.

80. The countries surrounding Palestine are relatively backward or semi-civilised territories with only inadequate veterinary services, where proper control of contagious animal diseases has yet to be developed. The land frontiers are easily passable and the Jordan river is fordable by livestock at innumerable places, especially during the dry season. Natural features do not assist in preventing the smuggling of stock, which is greatly encouraged by the local heavy demands for food animals. The movement of nomadic peoples with their animals also provide a source for the introduction of disease.

31. Potentially even more dangerous is the necessity for importing large numbers of slaughter stock and poultry from neighbouring territories and 1 prior to the war, by sea from south-eastern Europe to meet local food requirements, particularly of the large urban populations. The following examples of this serious danger may be cited:-

(a) The introduction of cattle plague in 1926; this was rapidly stamped out but the possibility of its recurrence is always present and must be guarded against.

(b) The detection of contagious bovine pleuro-pneumonia on various occasions in quarantined slaughter cattle from the Sudan.

(c) The detection of foot-and-mouth disease in imported cattle.

Pre-war there was always the possibility of the introduction of the serious types of this disease which cause disastrous epizootics in Europe; the form now prevalent in Palestine is comparatively mild.

(d) The serious spread of bacillary white diarrhoea of chicks in 1943, which very probably originated from hatching eggs from Egypt.

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