In 2001, foot-and-mouth disease decimated the U.K.’s beef industry. Millions of animals were culled after foot-and-mouth broke out in the country. According to the BBC, there were 2,000 cases of the disease, which resulted in entire farms having their animals slaughtered. Soldiers dug mass graves and piles of carcasses burned, black smoke billowing into the sky.

Over 20 years later, these images still haunt the U.K. and other countries around the world as the threat of foot-and-mouth looms. In Canada, the BSE outbreak in the early 2000s heightened worries of another disease outbreak.

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