Worrying signs of the new times

"There were numerous sites on both sides of the road, about 50-100 yards from the road and plainly in view," he says.

"They were great big fires and what looked like posts sticking up in the air, but it was the cows' legs. It was devastating to see all these cattle burning and the smell was awful."

The North-East largely escaped unscathed from the last major foot-and-mouth outbreak in Britain in 1967, when almost half a million animals were slaughtered.

But, as well as running the family farm in Teesdale with his father, Alan also ran a haulage business, driving the lorries himself. And it was this work which brought him into contact with the consequences of the disease.

"I remember one time it was just before Christmas and I was quite busy, taking porker pigs to Walsall," he says.

"I was coming back up the A6 - the M6 wasn't there then - and I was stopped so many times by the authorities, checking what I was carrying. We were allowed to take stock to abattoirs but we couldn't bring anything back.

"We were disinfected as we approached Cumbria, and again coming back into County Durham, and when I got back we didn't want to bring the lorry into the farmyard."

With the haulage business bringing Alan into contact with livestock in other parts of the country, strict precautions were taken to ensure the disease was not brought to the family farm, at Forest-in-Teesdale.

"There was a deep straw pit on the road to the farm which was kept soaked in disinfectant and there were always a couple of chaps there with pressure sprays to use on the wagons," he says.

"Every vehicle had to be doused with disinfectant. We were told it was the only way to kill it."

He remembers: "We had to get out of the lorry and put our waterproofs on the road and they would give them a hosing down. They would do your wellies and they would squirt in the cab where your feet had been.

"We were quite happy to be dealt with like that rather than see any chance of it spreading."

Alan made arrangements to leave the lorry at nearby Middleton-in-Teesdale to avoid bringing it onto the farm where there were about 1,000 Swaledale ewes and 80 beef cattle.

The 1967 outbreak began with a single case in the Shropshire market town of Oswestry, spreading to other farms in the county and to Cheshire and Wales.

In the five months before the disease was brought under control, 2,364 outbreaks had been reported, including a number of farms in Northumberland.

But measures to keep foot-and-mouth away from the rest of the North-East and North Yorkshire saw farmers virtually quarantine themselves.

"We made sure we didn't go to anyone else's farm," says Alan. "We did go out but we got disinfected every time.

"We ran out of quite a few things we needed on the farm but we didn't want to get them in so we just made do. People in those days were sensible enough to know how important the precautions were."

But this did not stop fear sweeping through members of the farming community, as they faced the potential loss of their livelihoods.

"Everyone was terrified, scared to death," he says. "You would hardly dare go out in the morning and look at the stock because you were worried what you might find."

John Rider was just starting out on his farming career, at the family pig business near Guisborough, when the 1967 outbreak began. But, even though the farm remained free of foot-and-mouth, it still felt the consequences of the new mood of anxiety.

"There was a feeling of fear, very much so," he says. "The whole farming industry was extremely nervous. We put notices out asking people to keep away from the public footpaths. It was one of the few times when the hunt didn't operate and there were no shooting parties or horse racing."

But, he said, there are key differences with the 1967 epidemic which could put today's farmers at even greater risk.

"In 1967, it started near Oswestry but it only spread very gradually, mainly through the wind," he says.

"Now, animals are moved about the country to a staggering degree. We have faster, bigger transport and better roads and a lot fewer abattoirs, so animals have to go a lot further for slaughter.

"This could be more serious because of the speed it has moved about the country."

The graves of livestock slaughtered during the 1967 crisis were a monument to the scale of the disaster for Teesdale farmer Richard Betton, then a schoolboy, and a reminder of the consequences of failing to stop the spread of the disease.

"I remember farms with great mountains where the cows had been burned and then buried," he says.

"The biggest problem this time is the changes in the industry since then. We are down to about 35 medium to large abattoirs, but in those days there were about 400-plus. It is more and more difficult to prevent the spread now because of the way the industry has evolved."

And the new outbreak has recreated the siege mentality of some farmers, determined to keep the disease from crossing their boundaries.

RICHARD Betton says: "We have got to treat each farm almost like a fortress, and we have got to think carefully about leaving the farm, and make sure we take the right precautions.

"Inevitably, the longer it goes on the more movements there are going to have to be to look after the livestock."

Already, more than 6,000 animals have been slaughtered or are due to be slaughtered, just a week into the epidemic. A confirmed case of foot-and-mouth, or even farming next to an infected herd, can mean the loss of a livelihood. But, for most farmers, that is not the worst of it.

"The layman just doesn't understand what it means," says Alan Scott. "It isn't the financial side, although that is a big problem. You have lost what you have strived for all these years.

"I thought I would never see foot-and-mouth again - it was one of the most horrendous periods in farming. To see all your cattle slaughtered must be awful. I just couldn't imagine how you cope.