Originally from: lina
                        
And here is another one that is still interesting.

http://www.quebecoislibre.org/010331–6.htm

There is also a great deal of argument about the
actual start time of this outbreak with the MAFF
identifying disease in a pig unit in Cumbria in
northern England on 22nd February. This is being
contrasted with a report that a French stock dealer
operating out of the UK, had sent infected sheep to
France on 31th January. Using an average incubation
period, this means that the animals which infected the
dealer's sheep were most probably exposed to infection
between 3–8 days prior to contact – i.e., between
23–28 January. It has been fairly well established
that none of the stock dealer's sheep came directly
from the Cumbrian pig unit, so they cannot have been
infected by the alleged « case zero » pigs.

 There must have been at least one other set
of animals that bridged the gap between the pig unit
and the sheep on the ferry to France. For the pigs
themselves to pass on the infection to these animals,
they must have been infected earlier, between 7–22
January. Without elaborating on the complexities of
this, the latest time for the disease to be visible in
the pig unit is then 25th January. Yet even today MAFF
is prepared only to concede that the infection may
have been present two weeks prior to the 22nd or about
8th February. Adding to the clouds of suspicion
surrounding this affair were reports of MAFF officials
making inquiries about purchasing « burn timber » in
November of last year.

Cheap sheep
 Fuelling the suspicion that there is more to this
than meets the eye is a report that eight days before
the official outbreak of FMD in the UK the Dutch dairy
industry met with the Dutch Agriculture Minister to
discuss tactics if FMD were to reach Holland from the
UK. Another report emerged last week that in 1998,
Agriculture Ministers from the EU met in secret
session to discuss a plan put forward by the European
Commission to abolish livestock farming in the English
region and to convert it instead to arable production.