This article aims at analyzing foot-and-mouth disease in the 2001 British winter according to post-normal science. We have analyzed the participation of different social agents and the interaction among the following categories: trust, reliability, administrative capacity, uncertainty, values and objectives. All these factors were part of a crisis that, on one hand assembled the political objectives of a government during campaign and the economic objectives of a European Union country, and on the other hand the needs of the population, affected by all the problems related to health and the environment. The steps taken to hold up this 'economic' disease became a really heterogeneous experiment in a large social scale, a typical phenomenon in modern times that demands new approaches to science and decision-making processes.
foot-and-mouth disease; environmental issue; administrative capacity; modern times; post-normal science