They follow on from the 19th-century series titled Contagious Diseases (Animals) Act.
The act of 1884 was designed to combat "heavy losses" due to cattle diseases such as rinderpest, contagious bovine pleuropneumonia and foot-and-mouth disease (FMD).
[2] The act of 1950 authorised the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries (today the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), when all other avenues of tuberculin prevention failed, to cull animals (including badgers),[3] and to halt the transportation of cattle from herds prone to FMD.
[4] Apparently the definition of poultry needed to be extended in 1953, to include birds of the species psittaciformes, doves, peafowl and swans.
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