While it is generally accepted that the organization which became the United States Animal Health Association began with a meeting in September of 1897 in Ft. Worth, TX, there were at least two meetings of state livestock regulatory officials before that.
The first, according to a history of the association published in the proceedings of the 54th annual meeting, was in late 1891 or 1892. The report of the board of livestock commissioners of Illinois for 1892 contained several resolutions on tuberculosis in cattle adopted by the Inter-State Meeting of Live Stock Boards and State Veterinarians.
Minutes are available in the National Agricultural Library in Beltsville, MD, of a National Live Stock Sanitary Convention in Washington, DC, June 19-21, 1894. Representatives from eight states and the Bureau of Animal Industry of USDA attended. A committee appointed to consider a permanent national organization recommended forming the National Live Stock Sanitary Association and a committee was named to draft a constitution and bylaws. Subjects discussed at this meeting included uniform state laws, glanders, TB and Texas fever quarantine. No record of any additional meetings of this group can be found.
These first, faltering attempts to form a national organization certainly laid the groundwork for the meeting Sept. 27 and 28, 1897--the first of what was to become an uninterrupted chain of annual meetings that have continued to today.
- Adapted from "Animal Health: A Century of Progress" by Neal Black