MICHAEL BRODBIN 05/04/01 Hi! Does anyone know why they bury the sheep, but not the cows - I heard it's something to do with BSE (mad cows) but I want to understand what that has to do with it? ADRIAN FIRTH 14/04/01 Originally the sheep were buried to help with the backlog of carcasses - they couldn't all be burned quickly enough. With the chief vet from the 1967 outbreak now coming forward and condemning the burning of carcasses this could replace burning almost completely. You're quite right about the cows and BSE - BSE is believed to be caused by a 'rogue protein', known as a prion. Proteins are especially tough at withstanding chemical attacks - they don't decay easily, and therefore if they were buried in the ground they could remain for years, putting other animals at risk of infection. Proteins are not recognised as a form of 'life', so 'killing them off' is not an option. In effect they're just 'well-developed molecules'. Sheep on the other hand are not (currently, that I know of) causing a problem with scrapie, the sheep form of BSE and so can be buried under EU rules. MICK O'DONOGHUE 03/06/01 Should people be allowed to take to the footpaths again? I think a good analogy is that of Diarrhoea. We know that if we stop eating for a full 48 hours our illness would be over quicker, but we want to eat so try to rely on drugs. We know that the Foot and Mouth outbreak may be shortened by reducing the spread of the virus for a reasonable period of time, but we still want to walk, ride horses and mountain bikes. So rely on others to use vaccines or culls to contain the disease. It's a very simple and cheap to avoid spreading the Foot and Mouth Virus by staying away from farmland and footpaths. So, running the risk of upsetting the urban middle classes, my view is that footpaths anywhere near a potential source of virus, or potential hosts should remain closed until no more new cases arise. A LAXTON 20/06/01 I have no doubt that the farmers are now suffering a loss of money, but they have had a lot of easy money in the past by increasing their flocks of sheep to the extent that almost every field has been turned over to them. The countryside has been overrun by sheep because of European suppliments giving money for producing things that nobody wants. The result is that the farmers are now finding that we have too much wool so they can't get a good price for it so they moan about that and ask for even more money to compensate for their losses. Anyone who has any sense would have realised that it could not continue. It is a known fact that it is very difficult to detect F&M in it's early stages in sheep so what is happening is that sheep are being moved into otherwise desease free areas which are infected. Why can't the farmers stop moving them till the epidemic ends and stop Bleating on about things that only they can deal with. OTHER TOPICS   SPACE TOURISM GENETIC PIGS FOR HUMAN TRANSPLANT Do you have a hot topic in science? We want to hear from you, so email us at mastersofscience@bbc.co.uk with your comments, which will appear on this site.