Introduction: Livestock Diseases and Veterinary Science in Southern Africa

Abstract

Broadly speaking, the conference presentations dealt (though not exclusively) with three major themes: (a) the institutionalisation and professionalisation of veterinary medicine and its practitioners; (b) the function and impact of state policy, regulation and intervention upon the practice of animal husbandry, especially in the colonial context; and (c) the relationship between certain environments and certain diseases. In southern Africa, the control and prevention of livestock diseases has been an important state function at least since the appointment of the first government veterinarians during the 1870s (Natal in 1874, with the Cape Colony following in 1876), although regulations to control animal disease existed before that. In Britain, Europe and colonial Asia, outbreaks of an extremely contagious and virulent disease known as 'cattle plague' or rinderpest periodically ravaged livestock populations.