54-701. Prevention of diseases; power of Department of Agriculture; Bureau of Animal Industry.

(1) The Department of Agriculture shall be vested with the power and charged with the duties of protecting the health of livestock in Nebraska and determining and employing the most efficient and practical means for the prevention, suppression, control, and eradication of dangerous, infectious, contagious, or otherwise transmissible diseases among livestock and such diseases transmissible from other animals to livestock. To that end, the department may place in quarantine any county or part of any county, any private premises, or any private or public stockyards and may quarantine any animal infected with such disease or which has been or is suspected of having been exposed to infection therefrom, may kill any animal so infected, and may regulate or prohibit the arrival into and departure from and movement within the state of any animal infected with such disease or exposed or suspected of having been exposed to the cause, infection, or contagion therefrom. At the cost of the owner, the department may detain any animal found in violation of any departmental or statutory regulation or prohibition.

(2) The department may adopt, promulgate, and enforce such rules and regulations as may be necessary for the supervision and control of manufactured and refined food for animals to prevent deleterious substances being present in human foods of animal origin and the manufacture, importation, sale, and storage of any biological material including semen, remedy, or curative agent for use on or in any animal that may be capable of causing or spreading disease, and as far as practicable such rules and regulations approved by the United States Department of Agriculture shall be adopted. All of the powers and duties of the department with reference to the protection of the health of livestock shall be exercised by and through the Bureau of Animal Industry.

Source

Annotations

Under certain conditions and circumstances, cattle imported in violation of statute and departmental regulations may be quarantined. Peterson v. George, 168 Neb. 571, 96 N.W.2d 627 (1959).

A statute is not special or local merely because it prohibits doing a thing in a certain locality such as permitting Department of Agriculture and Inspection to quarantine a single county or part thereof. Bauer v. State Game, Forestation & Parks Commission, 138 Neb. 436, 293 N.W. 282 (1940).

Tuberculin testing act sustained as constitutional against claim that it contains more than one subject not expressed in title, and against claim that it delegated legislative power. State ex rel. Sorensen v. Knudtsen, 121 Neb. 270, 236 N.W. 696 (1931).

Legislature may require owners of breeding cattle to submit animals to tuberculin test and adopt reasonable measure to carry out requirements, and may make distinction between breeding cattle and feeding cattle. State ex rel. Spillman v. Splittgerber, 119 Neb. 436, 229 N.W. 332 (1930).

Defendant was properly enjoined from obstructing state agents in applying tuberculin test to his cattle. State ex rel. Sorensen v. Kistler, 119 Neb. 89, 227 N.W. 319 (1929).