[Kymba]

I found this on a BBC Forum... Done in Feb 2001 Answers by former president of the British Veterinary Association, GP Francis Anthony and Anthony Gibson from the National Farmer's Union. here are just a couple of extracts that maybe of interest.
( sorry still not sure what links we can and cant usehence i am pasting some of it )

News Host:
Frances Anthony, as a vet, is that a usual way of foot-and-mouth spreading around?

Francis Anthony:
It is indeed. Pigs happen to be wonderful sentinels for the infection and secondly they are wonderful virus factories. This could have come in on a sandwich - it could have come in on any piece of meat from an infected area. The failure was in the cooking process because it is quite safe to feed waste food for pigs provided it is cooked under pressure for over an hour at 100 degrees centigrade but we all know there can be failures of plant. The pig is a wonderful virus factory for foot-and-mouth disease; give it a few particles and whoosh - out it comes.

News Host:
So the pig is excreting the virus as well then is it?

Francis Anthony:
The pig is excreting the virus very, very quickly. The incubation period is thought to be up to 14 days but with very virulent strains like the "o" strain from Asia it could be as little as three days but on average probably seven days.

News Host:
Why is it necessary to kill so many animals - why can't we treat them?

Francis Anthony:
Well you cannot treat most viruses easily - you can't treat people with influenza or the common cold - you can just support them until they get over it. One has to remember that foot-and-mouth disease doesn't kill animals - it kills very few - perhaps only the young and the weak. If you left it to run its course the animals would recover. But unfortunately dairy cows would not produce milk, beef animals would not fatten, lambs and pigs would not fatten. So the economic effect, bearing in mind that all these animals are producing products for human consumption, would be devastating.


News Host:
So is the slaughter a purely commercial concern?

Anthony Gibson:
You could say it is commercial concern and you could also say it is animal health concern. But one really doesn't want to have foot-and-mouth disease in the animal population on a long-term basis. The reason why so many animals have to be slaughtered is because it is such an infectious condition. The animals have to be slaughtered and incinerated under very particular conditions to make sure that any risk of the virus escaping into the atmosphere and being blown onto another farm is minimised.