As foot and mouth disease continues to sweep across Britain, George Frew looks back at how Oxfordshire coped with the last major outbreak

Livestock farmers in Oxfordshire who coped with the foot and mouth outbreak more than 30 years ago had hoped they'd seen the worst that nature could throw at them, and got away with it.

But they have always been aware that the deadly animal virus could return at any time.

Flashback: Soldiers help contain the spread of foot and mouth disease at Abingdon Bridge in 1967 with straw soaked in disinfectant

As the worst outbreak of the disease the country had seen in a century swept down from the north in 1967-68, the farmers in this county - home then to one of the largest pig populations in the land - could do little more than spread disinfectant and utter prayers.

Pigs were especially at risk because they can spread the disease 30 times more quickly than cattle.

In Chipping Norton 391 pigs were killed over a five-week period from November - December to comply with foot and mouth control.

In all, 540 animals, including sheep and cattle, were slaughtered as a precaution - compared with 292 in the preceding six weeks.

The slaughterhouse gutters ran with blood - "all day, every day".

At Blenheim it took until January before foot and mouth restrictions were eased. Local residents from Woodstock and Bladon who held admission tickets were allowed back into the park, but anglers, dogs and visitors from outside the town were still barred.

Farmers' markets were cancelled and tourist attractions featuring wildlife were closed.

Yet somehow, by luck or the grace of God, Oxfordshire, its farmers and their animals escaped the disease itself. When the national costs were added up in the summer of 1968, it emerged that the National Farmers' Union estimated the epidemic had cost the nation £150m - or £1.546bn in today's terms.

Nationwide, there were 2,364 outbreaks of the disease, which resulted in the slaughter of some 429,632 animals. Compensation for animals slaughtered alone came to almost £27m. Nearly 1,000 vets from governments as far afield as Canada and New Zealand were called in to assist in helping to treat and curb the epidemic.

"Never again" was the prayer of farmers

everywhere - yet by December, 1977, the Oxford Mail was running a story headlined, 'Foot and mouth: could the scourge fall again?' The horror story of the winter of a decade earlier was chillingly recalled.

Images of bulldozers scooping out trenches of death seared the collective memory. Snatches of despairing conversations recalled: "There was something on the news - there's an outbreak over your way" - or, worse, much worse: "We've got it. They're shooting now."

Then, as now, Oxfordshire was a county ringed by pestilence. With the Midlands the worst area affected, farmers and their families there led lives cut off from the world, their badges of isolation the trough which stood at every farm gate, with its pinkish, purple disinfectant contents.

Soldiers manned bridges across the Thames, directing all vehicles through a protective disinfectant mat of straw.

By 1981, the spectre of foot and mouth had returned, with cattle again slaughtered at Banbury stockyard as a precautionary measure after an outbreak of the disease had been discovered on the Isle of Wight.

Britain's policy to combat foot and mouth has always been to slaughter. Vaccination, an alternative, has in the past always been ruled out on grounds of cost.

As the latest outbreak of foot and mouth disease continues to cause deep concern, the farmers of Oxfordshire are well aware that, in the past, they have been lucky.

But they know, too, that they need only be unlucky just once.

Foot and Mouth - the facts

**Foot and mouth is a type of severe animal flu which causes blisters on the mouth and feet and weakness in the animal. Foot and mouth is seldom fatal - only a small percentage of animals affected die when they first fall sick

**In cows, the milk yield drops dramatically. Pigs do not gain weight as normal and piglets die soon after birth. Farmers' livelihoods depend on extremely narrow profit margins and drops in productivity of, say, 50 per cent mean that many would find it impossible to remain in business.

Read about the crisis nationally.