The coverage of previous foot-and-mouth outbreaks has tended to focus on the distant past. Commentators recall 1967, when the disease was in Britain but kept out of the island of Ireland; or 1941, when this State was affected.

There's been little mention, however, of how frequently this disease has affected other countries much more recently, including countries that attract thousands of Irish tourists. Unlike today, when residents of this State are being urged every day to avoid visiting Britain and Northern Ireland - and sporting events, in particular, are falling by the wayside - travel to and from affected countries carried on regardless.

In the last two years alone, 60 countries have had outbreaks of foot-and-mouth. Greece, a hugely popular tourist destination, was affected last year, and on other occasions during the 1990s. Italy, Israel, Japan, South Africa and Brazil have also been affected recently, but Irish airports contained no footbaths or disinfectant mats for people returning from those countries.

Last December, in the world-famous Serengeti wildlife park in Tanzania, an estimated 20 per cent of the wildebeest were lame, affected by an outbreak of foot-and-mouth.

There was virtually no media coverage here of any of these outbreaks. And while restrictions applied on these countries exporting meats and unpasteurised dairy products while they had the disease, there's no sign of massive panic about the movement of people.

And on none of these occasions did the disease spread to Ireland and cause outbreaks here.

On the other hand, foot-and-mouth has become much more common in well-off western countries in the last few years, and the hugely increased movement of people - as business travellers, tourists, refugees etc - has been named as one possible cause of the increasing number of outbreaks.

The more likely causes, however, remain the international movement of animals and the materials that farmers use to feed and bed them. As we've learned in recent weeks, the average "spring lamb" may spend most of its short life in lorries being ferried around Europe in pursuit of the best prices for its owners and shippers. And that's just the legal movement; plenty of animals are obviously being smuggled across borders too.

It has been widely suggested that the British outbreak originated with some cheap imported pig feed - swill - that contained infected material. In Japan, a country that had been free of the disease for many years, the recent outbreak was blamed on straw that had been brought into the country from an infected area in China, via Russia.