Act No. 3639 (1929)

Also known as: The Bureau of Animal Industry creating act · The 1929 agriculture split — the genealogical shorthand of this wiki's Bureau of Agriculture entry · The BAI/BPI statute — the two-successor styling

Government

Definition

Act No. 3639 is the statute of the Philippine Legislature long-titled “AN ACT CREATING THE BUREAU OF ANIMAL INDUSTRY; DEFINING ITS POWERS AND FUNCTIONS; PROVIDING FOR ITS PERSONNEL; MAKING APPROPRIATIONS FOR ITS ORGANIZATION AND OPERATION; CHANGING THE NAME OF THE BUREAU OF AGRICULTURE TO BUREAU OF PLANT INDUSTRY; AND FOR OTHER PURPOSES” — approved December 7, 1929 and, by its Section 11, effective January 1, 1930: the act that ended the unified Bureau of Agriculture by carving its animal divisions into the new Bureau of Animal Industry and renaming what remained the Bureau of Plant Industry. (SC e-Library — Act No. 3639) Section 1 created the new bureau “under the Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources”; Section 3 charged it to “investigate, study and report upon the condition of the domestic animals in the Philippine Islands”; and Section 7 transferred to it “the division of animal industry, comprising the veterinary section, the animal husbandry section, the animal quarantine stations, the Veterinary Research Laboratory, and the stock farms, of the Bureau of Agriculture” — personnel, equipment, and appropriations swept along. (LawPhil — Act No. 3639)

The same instrument performed the renaming by what it left behind: Section 8 provided that the divisions of the old bureau not carried into the animal side “shall, collectively, constitute and be known as the Bureau of Plant Industry,” the plant side keeping the work of the 1901 bureau under a new name and a new Director of Plant Industry, in whom the remaining powers of the Director of Agriculture vested. (SC e-Library — Act No. 3639) The Bureau of Animal Industry was then “organized on January 31, 1930 pursuant to Act No. 3639,” in the bureau’s own history page’s wording — the third of the three dates every citation of this act must choose among — and the two successor bureaus have served the agriculture department ever since. (BAI — History, Wikipedia — BPI)

Identities

Source Type	Identity
Wikipedia	N/A — no standalone article (title verified missing this session); the split is treated within Bureau of Plant Industry (Philippines)
Wikidata	N/A — entity search returns no item for the act (verified this session)
DBpedia	N/A — the data endpoint returns an empty resource (verified this session)
ProductOntology	N/A
Wiktionary	rinderpest — the contagious cattle plague the act’s disease-control mandate targeted (a disease entry, not the statute)
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH)	N/A — name search returns only “United States. Bureau of Animal Industry” (verified this session)
MeSH	N/A
NCBI Taxonomy	N/A
AGROVOC	animal husbandry (c_8532) — the new bureau’s industry domain (verified this session)
Google Scholar	Act No. 3639 December 7 1929 Bureau of Animal Industry Bureau of Plant Industry Bureau of Agriculture split veterinary section animal husbandry section stock farms Veterinary Research Laboratory Revised Administrative Code 1762 1770 Acts 3101 3166 rinderpest Philippine Legislature
ConceptNet	N/A — ConceptNet API unreachable this session (HTTP 502)
OpenCyc	N/A

Also Known As

The Bureau of Animal Industry creating act
The 1929 agriculture split — the genealogical shorthand of this wiki’s Bureau of Agriculture entry
The BAI/BPI statute — the two-successor styling

Examples and Analogies

One statute, two bureaus: the long title performs both operations in a single breath — “CREATING THE BUREAU OF ANIMAL INDUSTRY” and “CHANGING THE NAME OF THE BUREAU OF AGRICULTURE TO BUREAU OF PLANT INDUSTRY” — creation and renaming as two clauses of one colonial reorganization. (SC e-Library — Act No. 3639)
A split along the plant–animal line: Section 7 enumerated the animal side — veterinary and animal husbandry sections, quarantine stations, the laboratory, the stock farms — while Section 8 collected everything else “collectively” as the plant bureau, the kingdom line that still divides the Department of Agriculture’s two oldest bureaus. (LawPhil — Act No. 3639)
A profession written into the salary: Section 2 required that the Director and Assistant Director of Animal Industry each be “either a competent veterinary surgeon or a man well trained in animal husbandry,” at ₱7,200 and ₱6,000 a year — a scientific qualification legislated for a colonial bureau chief. (LawPhil — Act No. 3639)
Verified statutory data:
Approval and effectivity: approved December 7, 1929; “This Act shall take effect on January first, nineteen hundred and thirty” (Sec. 11) (SC e-Library — Act No. 3639)
Creation: “There is hereby created under the Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources” the Bureau of Animal Industry (Sec. 1); duties to investigate, report, introduce purebred stock, control dangerous communicable diseases, and conduct demonstration work (Sec. 3) (LawPhil — Act No. 3639)
Definitions: “domestic animals” from horses and cattle to carabaos, hogs, dogs, deer, and fowls; “dangerous communicable diseases” from glanders and surra to anthrax and rinderpest (Sec. 4) (LawPhil — Act No. 3639)
Quarantine transfer: the animal quarantine and inspection powers under sections 1762–1770 of the Revised Administrative Code and Acts Nos. 3101 and 3166 “transferred to and vested in the Bureau of Animal Industry” (Sec. 5) (LawPhil — Act No. 3639)
Organization: the Bureau of Animal Industry “organized on January 31, 1930 pursuant to Act No. 3639” (BAI — History)
Money: ₱20,000 appropriated from the Insular Treasury for organization and operation (Sec. 9) (SC e-Library — Act No. 3639)

Usage Scenarios

1. Fixing the BAI and BPI Creation Dates

Researchers dating either successor bureau cite this act’s three clocks — approval December 7, 1929, effectivity January 1, 1930, organization January 31, 1930 — the dating discipline this wiki’s Bureau of Animal Industry entry applies. (SC e-Library — Act No. 3639, BAI — History)

2. Quoting the Transfer of the Animal Divisions

Section 7’s inventory is the primary text for what moved — sections, stations, laboratory, farms, personnel, appropriations — and Section 5 for the quarantine powers that followed, the operative provisions for any history of the veterinary service. (LawPhil — Act No. 3639)

3. Tracing the Agriculture Bureau Genealogy

The act is the hinge of the genealogy this wiki traces from the Insular Bureau of Agriculture of 1901 to the modern staff bureaus: one bureau becomes two by statute, and every later instrument — Act 4007 of 1932, PD 461 of 1974, EO 116 of 1987 — rearranges the successors rather than the ancestor. (Wikipedia — BPI, SC e-Library — Act No. 3639)

4. Studying Colonial Administrative Specialization

The statute is a specimen of the Insular Government’s late specialization era: the generalist scientific bureaus of the founding generation divided by subject, the animal and plant kingdoms each given their own administration a decade before the Commonwealth. (SC e-Library — Act No. 3639, Wikipedia — BPI)

Strategies

Divide the generalist by kingdom: the act’s method was fission — not a new department, but one bureau split into two specialists, each with its own director, keeping the department above them unchanged. (SC e-Library — Act No. 3639)
Transfer powers by reference: Section 5 moved the quarantine machinery by citing the Revised Administrative Code and two earlier acts, so the new bureau inherited an enforcement system without restating it. (LawPhil — Act No. 3639)
Legislate the profession with the office: Section 2 tied the bureau’s leadership to veterinary or animal-husbandry training — mandate and expertise enacted together. (LawPhil — Act No. 3639)
Rename rather than dissolve: Section 8 let the plant side continue as the Bureau of Plant Industry with its powers vested in the new director — continuity preserved for the majority of the old bureau’s work. (SC e-Library — Act No. 3639)

Security and Safety Measures

Animal disease control as a standing state duty: Section 3’s charge to investigate and report on the condition of domestic animals, with Section 4’s disease definitions from glanders to rinderpest, made livestock biosecurity an Insular Government function from 1930. (LawPhil — Act No. 3639)
Quarantine at the border: the Section 5 vesting of quarantine and inspection powers is the legal root of the animal-border controls the successor bureau still administers. (LawPhil — Act No. 3639)
Funded from the start: the Section 9 appropriation made organization immediate — no interim period between effectivity and the January 31 organization. (SC e-Library — Act No. 3639, BAI — History)
For researchers: cite the act as a 1929 Act of the Philippine Legislature — not the “Republic Act No. 3639” styling that circulated accounts have used — and date every event to its own clock. (SC e-Library — Act No. 3639)

Historical Context

The act belongs to the last reorganization season of the American colonial state. The Bureau of Agriculture — created by Act No. 261 of October 8, 1901 and carried into the Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources at that department’s creation in the Jones Law era, as this wiki’s entries on the bureau and the department record — had held both plant and animal work under one directorate for nearly three decades, with rinderpest and hog cholera the standing emergencies of the livestock economy. Act 3639, approved December 7, 1929, split it: the animal divisions, their quarantine powers, and their stock farms became the Bureau of Animal Industry, and the remainder was renamed the Bureau of Plant Industry, both under the same secretary. (SC e-Library — Act No. 3639, BAI — History)

The successors outlived the regime that made them. The 1932 reorganization law restructured the young bureaus, as this wiki’s Bureau of Animal Industry entry records; the Commonwealth and the republic kept both through the postwar DANR; PD 461 of May 17, 1974 listed them among the Department of Agriculture’s five bureaus after the DANR’s split; and EO 116 of January 30, 1987 seated them in the Production Group of the modern department — the 1929 division still legible in the agriculture bureaucracy of the present, as this wiki’s Presidential Decree No. 461 and Executive Order No. 116 entries document. (Wikipedia — BPI, SC e-Library — Act No. 3639)

Challenges and Controversies

A Renaming or a Split?

The statute’s own Section 8 says renaming — the remaining divisions “shall, collectively, constitute and be known as the Bureau of Plant Industry” — yet the modern reference record describes a split: the bureau’s own history page says Act 3639 divided the old bureau “into two distinct entities,” and Wikipedia’s plant-industry article dates the split to January 1, 1930 without mentioning the renaming at all. Both readings describe the same operation; the statute’s wording governs quotation. (BAI — History, Wikipedia — BPI)

Three Dates for One Birth

Approval (December 7, 1929), effectivity (January 1, 1930), and organization (January 31, 1930) answer three different questions, and accounts that give one without saying which have produced a century of misdated citations — the caution this wiki’s Bureau of Plant Industry entry registers. (SC e-Library — Act No. 3639, BAI — History)

A Name Shared with an American Bureau

The Library of Congress name search for “Bureau of Animal Industry” returns only the United States Department of Agriculture’s bureau, and the unqualified title reaches the American body in the reference databases — so Philippine citations of the act’s creation must carry the qualifier, the namesake trap this wiki’s Bureau of Animal Industry entry documents. (SC e-Library — Act No. 3639)

No Linked-Data Record of Its Own

The act has no Wikipedia article, no Wikidata item, and no DBpedia resource — all verified empty or missing this session — so any semantic-web citation must be built from the statute book. (SC e-Library — Act No. 3639, LawPhil — Act No. 3639)