Combating animal infectious diseases in Poland in the years 1918-1939 on the example of rinderpest and foot and mouth disease. Legal and administrative aspect

The regaining of independence by Poland in 1918 brought freedom, but it also posed many challenges for the state administration, including the reconstruction of a uniform veterinary service. It was not an easy task, considering that already in early 1920 an epizootic of rinderpest crossed the Caucasus and spread in the European part of Soviet Russia, reaching eastern Poland in September of that year. A modern legal framework for combating contagious animal diseases was successfully established within merely ten years. A breakthrough in the field of law regarding the eradication of infectious animal diseases was the Regulation of the President of the Republic of Poland of August 22, 1927 on combating contagious animal diseases. It was the first legal act of this type in the country and one of the most modern regulations of its kind in Europe at that time. The list of infectious diseases covered by the obligation to report and control included rinderpest, contagious bovine pleuropneumonia, foot-and-mouth disease, anthrax, blackleg disease, game and cattle plague, tuberculosis of cattle in the open form (lungs, udder, uterus and intestines), glanders of solipeds, sheep pox, dourine, coital exanthema of equines and cattle, scabies of solipeds and sheep, rabies, swine fever and plague, swine erysipelas, poultry cholera (pasterellosis) and chicken plague. The article presents the rules of combating infectious animal diseases in the example of rinderpest and foot-and-mouth disease, which were characteristic of the period of the Second Polish Republic.