Dogs are believed to have been the first domesticated animal species, likely occurring in many locations around the world at least 20,000 years ago to help humans track and hunt wild animals for food. Sheep and goats were likely the first food animal species domesticated around 11,000 years ago, in mountainous regions in present-day Turkey and Iran.
Over the millennia, farmers have been trying to figure out why some of their animals were dying of diseases and what they could do to stop it. However, it wasn’t until the mid-18th century, after the first vaccinations for humans (smallpox) was developed and the germ theory of disease became more widely accepted, that the study of animal disease and the practice of veterinary medicine began to emerge as systematic sciences.
The first true veterinary school was established in Lyon, France in 1761, as Claude Bourgelat was commissioned and funded by King Louis XIV to try to find a way to stop the scourge of rinderpest, a cattle disease that had killed an estimated 200 million animals in Europe during the first half of the 18th century. At that time, the school provided one year of instruction to its students.
It took more than a century for the first U.S. counterpart institution to arrive. The first school of veterinary medicine in the United States was located at what is now Iowa State University in 1879. Iowa State had been the first educational institution to receive land grant status, within three months of the enactment of the Morrill Act of 1862. The school began granting four-year degrees in veterinary medicine in 1903. There are now 32 accredited colleges of veterinary medicine in the United States.
The then-Commissioner of Agriculture, George Loring from Massachusetts, a former member of Congress, set up a Veterinary Division at the U.S. Department in 1883, and then the unit was renamed the Bureau of Animal Industry (BAI) about a year later after President Chester Arthur signed the Animal Industry Act in 1884. The unit was initially charged with “promoting livestock disease research, enforcing animal import regulations, and regulating the interstate movement of animals.” In 1953, the BAI was merged with the Bureau of Entomology and the Bureau of Plant Quarantine to create the Agricultural Research Service (ARS).
The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) was established in 1972 as a USDA agency under a memorandum signed by Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz. The new agency consisted of the plant and animal research divisions from ARS, and the meat and poultry inspection divisions from what is now known as the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS).
While there a number of serious animal diseases that have struck livestock herds around the world over time, those that afflict cattle and other ruminant species tend to garner the most public attention. The disease rinderpest, which means ‘cattle plague’ in German, mentioned briefly above, was first identified as a disease spread through the transport of cattle from ancient Egypt in 3000 BC. In the 18th century, experimentation with inoculation of cattle was conducted in England and the Netherlands, with relatively mixed results. The virus spread to Africa through colonization, and an outbreak in eastern and southern Africa in the 1890’s is estimated to have killed 80 to 90 percent of the cattle in that region. An outbreak of the disease in Europe in early 20th century led to the establishment of the Office International des Epizooties (OIE), now the World Organization on Animal Health (WOAH) in 1924 in Paris, France.
Work on vaccinations against this disease resumed in the 20th century using more rigorous scientific techniques. Dr. Walter Plowright, an English veterinarian, developed a tissue culture vaccine during the 1960’s which helped contribute to the elimination of this disease globally as of 2011. He was awarded the World Food Prize in 1999 for his work.
Foot and mouth disease infects cattle and other ruminants--including hogs, sheep, goats, and wild ruminant species such as water buffalo and wildebeests in Africa. This disease has captured public attention over recent centuries, and is present in 77 percent of the world’s livestock population. Mortality is relatively low (1-5 percent) among adult animals who contract this disease, but much higher among young animals, up to 80 percent. A 2013 paper estimated that the global annual cost of the disease in terms of lost livestock production and vaccinations administered in endemic regions ranged between $6.5 and $21 billion, with additional costs of $1.5 billion per year in previously FMD-free regions when cases are detected.
The United States was hit with nine distinct outbreaks of foot and mouth disease between 1870 and 1929. Outbreaks in both Mexico and Canada in 1954 prompted the U.S. government to establish a USDA research facility to study foot and mouth disease and other highly transmissible animal diseases on Plum Island, a small island off the coast of Long Island in New York state, so as to minimize risk of transmission of those diseases to livestock populations on the U.S. mainland. Prior to 1954, this type of research had been conducted at European facilities with which the U.S. government had formal arrangements for USDA scientists to work overseas. Congress had authorized USDA to set up a U.S. facility in 1948 but the Department did not select Plum Island until several years later, initially renovating buildings that were originally part of Fort Terry, an Army base that had been part of a coastal defense network since 1897. Management of the Plum Island facility was transferred to the newly established Department of Homeland Security (DHS) in 2003.
Due to the Plum Island facility’s limited capacity and less than ideal biosecurity protocols, Congress provided authorization for a new animal disease research lab to be built. DHS selected Manhattan, KS as the site for the new facility in 2009, and construction was initiated in 2013. The work on the National Bio and Agro-defense Facility (NBAF) was completed in late 2022 and will be operated by USDA after a MOU transferring the facility was executed in 2019.
