Q. What is foot and mouth?

A. A highly infectious viral disease of cloven-hooved animals such as pigs, sheep, cattle and goats. There are seven strains.

Q. What does it do?

A. Animals can carry and spread the virus for up to two days before they show symptoms. The first signs are a fever followed by the development of blisters, mostly in the mouth and on the feet. Most adult animals survive.

Q. Why slaughter them?

A. Besides removing the risk of the disease spreading, the virus leaves animals badly weakened, unable to produce economic amounts of milk.

Q. How does it spread?

A. It is found in fluid from blisters and also in saliva, milk and dung. It can spread miles in the wind. Livestock pick up the virus by direct contact with an infected animal or with contaminated foodstuffs.

Q. Can people contract it?

A. There has been only one recorded case in the UK, in 1966; leaving blisters and flu-like symptoms.

Q. How long can the disease survive?

A. Heat, sunlight and disinfectants can destroy the virus within hours, but in darkness it can stay alive for months.

Q. What happens to infected animals?

A. British policy is the mandatory slaughter of affected animals and all livestock in contact with them. Now the government is prepared to vaccinate apparently uninfected animals after rejecting it in 2001.

Q. How is it contained?

A. With a 1.8mile restriction zone around the infected area and a national ban on the movement of sheep, cattle and pigs.

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