ABSTRACT
This chapter offers an account of the foot and mouth disease outbreak of 2001. In many ways it is a story with such astonishing features that it almost requires little additional critique. However, we wish to pick up on some of the themes in the opening chapter. One of these, the globalisation and re-structuring of the food sector may seem surprising, since, although the disease did spread from Britain to Ireland, France and the Netherlands it was contained relatively quickly. The outbreak seemed largely a domestic character. In fact we will show that political handling of the crisis was dictated from the outset by the perceived need to protect global markets. Indeed the very seat of the infection almost certainly lay in imported meat.
