His 1905 discovery of contaminated milk as the vector for transmission to humans of brucellosis melitensis present in the blood of the goat greatly contributed to the elimination from the islands of undulant fever, earning him the knighthood.
Before becoming an actress McEvoy was employed at the Department of Agriculture in Dublin as a serological assistant testing for brucellosis.
In cows, spontaneous abortion may be caused by contagious disease, such as Brucellosis or Campylobacter, but often can be controlled by vaccination.
These captive herds are particularly important for conservation and recovery purposes, because the larger free-ranging herds in and around Wood Buffalo National Park were infected with bovine brucellosis and tuberculosis after 7,000 plains bison (Bison bison bison) were trans-shipped by barge from Buffalo National Park near Wainwright, Alberta in the 1920s.