Good News For The Cloven-Hoofed

A second disease wiped from the planet by gov't. & UN do-gooders & nanny-statists.

FIELD OF DEATH Cattle carcasses littered a pasture in South Africa in 1900 during a rinderpest epidemic.

But rinderpest is hardly irrelevant to humans. It has been blamed for speeding the fall of the Roman Empire, aiding the conquests of Genghis Khan and hindering those of Charlemagne, opening the way for the French and Russian Revolutions, and subjugating East Africa to colonization.

Any society dependent on cattle — or relatives like African zebu, Asian water buffaloes or Himalayan yaks — was vulnerable.

As meat and milk, cattle were and are both food and income to peasant farmers, as well as the source of calves to sell and manure for fields. Until recently, they were the tractors that dragged plows and the trucks that hauled crops to market. When herds die, their owners starve.

The long but little-known campaign to conquer rinderpest is a tribute to the skill and bravery of “big animal” veterinarians, who fought the disease in remote and sometimes war-torn areas — across arid stretches of Africa bigger than Europe, in the Arabian desert and on the Mongolian steppes.

It goes on & on.

Next eradication: Cooties?