The search for the source of the foot and mouth outbreak centres on two animal health research laboratories based next to each other at Pirbright in Surrey.

One of them belongs to Merial, a joint venture between pharmaceutical giants Merck and Sanofi-Aventis. Its research and manufacturing operation for foot and mouth vaccines has increased sharply since the 2001 outbreak in which 6.5m animals were slaughtered

The other is the Institute for Animal Health, funded by the government, whose Pirbright laboratory is Britain’s main centre for research into infectious livestock diseases.

It has become a world reference centre for foot and mouth and is sent samples from all over the world to identify the strains involved.

The siting of the two laboratories, just 150 yards apart, was meant to allow government scientists to work closely with Merial. The company benefits from many facilities at the institute’s laboratory, including a library of 5,000 strains of the virus.

The institute has high security facilities where animals can be infected with diseases such as foot and mouth to see how the diseases develop and to test the effectiveness of Merial’s vaccines.

The exact nature of the financial relationship between the two organisations is unclear but Merial, based in the US, had sales of £1 billion in 2006. The institute’s Pirbright laboratory is, by contrast suffering from funding cuts that last year prompted warnings from MPs.

Research laboratories have often proved to be sources of disease and the institute itself is thought to have been the source of a foot and mouth outbreak in the 1950s.

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