The sheer size of modern flocks makes detection hard. Pigswill is kitchen waste collected from restaurants, schools and canteens and boiled to produces a thick liquid. Pigs eat it because their robust digestive systems can take meats and all kinds of plants. Farmers like it because it is cheap. However, owing to the tough laws imposed on the use of pigswill since 1980, pigswill is now used only on a small proportion of the 3,000 odd pig farms, concentrated mainly in East Anglia and East and North Yorkshire.
Critics say that pigswill is only a side-issue.
The infection could have come through exotic meats bush rats, monkey meat, cow s nostrils and caterpilars, which are smuggled in for specially ethnic market like Chinese, Indian and other Asian restaurants. Nick Brown, UK s Agriculture Minister, said in Parliament on March 27 that the illegal meat was the probable cause of the FMD outbreak. Half of the cases in the present outbreak could be traced back to the market at Longton in Cumbria and Welshpool in Wales. Before movement restrictions were introduced, many animals were going from one market to another on their way to the abattoir, being sold on and sent further afield to wherever they would fetch a better price. To enable farmers to claim subsidy payments they re not entitled to, a farmer who has sold some sheep in his flock rings up a dealer and asks him to lend him some animals to claim his full entitlement.