P.R. Laws tit. 5, § 742
It is hereby found and declared that all premises, all property thereon, and all livestock in Puerto Rico are exposed to infection by, or are infected with the ticks causing diseases in livestock. The livestock industry in Puerto Rico has for many years been exposed to the serious risk of infection or contagion of the diseases known as Texas fever or bovine piroplasmosis, equine piroplasmosis, anaplasmosis fever, infectious anemia, dermatophilosis and pericarditis, which can cause death of livestock. It has been proved that Texas fever and anaplasmosis fever have become generalized in the Commonwealth and that it is necessary to attack these grave evils effectively. It is likewise necessary as a preventive and generalized measure to attack and eradicate the other types of ticks to prevent them from becoming epidemic. It has also been established that these fevers and diseases are transmitted from one animal to another by means of the cattle tick.
The experience of the Commonwealth Department of Agriculture has shown that the tick is difficult to exterminate unless a general, systematic, uniform, and effective campaign is carried on uninterruptedly throughout the Commonwealth. The treatment now given to livestock in the fixed or portable vats manufactured or acquired by the Department of Agriculture or by the owner of the livestock, and with the spraying or dipping equipment or any other system or equipment to be used in the future, is effective in freeing the livestock so treated from tick infestations, but it does not protect them against possible infestations coming from adjacent and neighboring properties. Therefore, it is convenient, necessary and indispensable, that the work be extended to all the livestock and to all the properties in the same manner, and more or less at the same time, so that the infestation that prevails or may arise in the future in our livestock and in the Commonwealth may speedily decrease.
History —May 15, 1936, No. 106, p. 542, § 3; May 6, 1988, No. 24, p. 96, § 3.