Hog Cholera Breaks Out in Snohomish County, and the Swine Industry Is Warned It Faces Annihilation
Fifty head already dead in a single herd; the paper demands the state act before the disease gets a permanent foothold on the coast.
An announcement that will be viewed with surprise and alarm by swine breeders in the Northwest states is that hog cholera has broken out in Snohomish county. Mr. Fred Redig, a special representative of this paper, sends us the news that 50 head of one herd, from six months to one year old, have died from the disease. Prompt action should be taken by the state authorities to stamp it out, else the swine industry of the coast states stands in a way to be completely annihilated. The great losses of the breeders of the Middle states by hog cholera have meant a cost of hundreds of thousands of dollars, and if once it gets a firm foothold here, the germs cannot be eradicated and annual attacks will sweep through our stock districts. Action should be taken immediately.
“If once it gets a firm foothold here, the germs cannot be eradicated and annual attacks will sweep through our stock districts. Action should be taken immediately.”
A century before avian flu and swine-fever scares emptied Northwest barns, this page carried the same argument: a disease crossing into a region with no immunity, and farmers begging the state to move before it is too late. Snohomish County's farms were the agricultural engine of the young state, and an epidemic there was an economic emergency, not just a rural nuisance. The playbook — quarantine, stamping out, state authority — is still the one we reach for.
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