[Veterinary medicine and preventive medicine].

Veterinary medicine concentrates its main activities onto the curative practice for animals but also onto the field of health protection for men since a very long time. But as late as in the year 1900 the first regulation by law within the modern world was edited in Germany. It was initiated by the well-known pathologist Virchow in Berlin and elaborated, besides other veterinarians, by the first food hygienist at the Veterinary School of Berlin, Robert von Ostertag. At that time, the protection of men from the classical infections caused by bacteria was the target, e.g. tuberculosis and the so-called food poisoning. Also, parasitoses like trichinellosis or hydatidosis were the most fought enemies. Nearly 100 years after the application of this regulation by law new types of zoonoses or zooanthroponoses get importance in the view of preventive medicine fulfilled by veterinarians. That are infections which can not be recognized visually and clinically in the new breeding and fattening ways for animals. Such latent infections are the main targets in the present goals and objectives of food hygiene. An undefined and unsolved problem seems to be the occurrence of the BSE of cattle in Great Britain. It may be regarded as a new and intermediate form of a latent and apparent disease of animals which may be dangerous by an unknown way also for men. Since the seventies of this century, the interest of veterinary medicine was focussed also onto residue levels within the products from food animals. These are caused by "substances with pharmacological efficacy", illegally handled by agronoms or veterinarians or by "poisons from the contaminated environment" provoked by industrial emission or manipulations by men. A classical task of food hygiene within the veterinary medicine is to protect the consumer from being taken advantage of through the sale of products containing substantial disregulatory structures of animal tissues.