milk and meat frightened city people into supporting controls, although at the time, little evidence showed that tuberculosis was spread to humans through infected meat or milk. The campaigns against impure meat and milk led to tension between the developing veterinarian profession and the medical profession, each claiming that area as part of their own expertise. By 1917, 5% of American cattle were infected with M. bovis (bovine tuberculosis or bTB), including 10% dairy animals and 1–2% of beef cattle. The rates were going up. Around 1900, 15,000 Americans, mostly children, died each year from bTB, and many more suffered pain and disfigurement. Threatened by a sales cutoff ordered by urban public health officials, Vermont state government officials launched an innovative eradication campaign against bTB on farms, 1877 to 1936. They made use of the latest German research, and thereby kept the New York City and Boston markets. Vermont was exceptional, for across the country many farmers strenuously resisted bovine tuberculosis eradication as an expensive violation of their libertarian right to farm. In recent decades, M. bovis infections in cattle herds in the United States are not common. M. bovis is endemic in white-tailed deer (Odocoileus virginianus) in the northeastern portion of Michigan and northern Minnesota, and sporadically imported from Mexico. Only the white-tailed deer has been confirmed as a maintenance host in the Michigan outbreak of bTB, although other mammals such as raccoons (Procyon lotor), opossums (Didelphis virginiana), and coyotes (Canis latrans) can serve as spill-over and dead-end hosts. The fact that white-tailed deer are a maintenance host for M. bovis remains a significant barrier to the US nationwide eradication of the disease in livestock. In 2008, 733,998 licensed deer hunters harvested around 489,922 white-tailed deer in attempts to control the disease spread. These hunters purchased more than 1.5 million deer-harvest tags. The economic value of deer hunting to Michigan's economy in the drive to eradicate TB is substantial. For example, in 2006, hunters spent US$507 million hunting white-tailed deer in Michigan. Global The disease is found in cattle throughout the globe, but some countries have been able to reduce or limit the incidence of the disease through a process of "test and cull" of the cattle stock. Most of Europe and several Caribbean countries (including Cuba) are virtually free of M. bovis. Australia is officially free of the disease since the successful BTEC program, but residual infections might