Transcript: Foot and Mouth

NARRATOR: Officially the impetus for building the fence came after devastating outbreaks of foot and mouth disease in Botswanan cattle in 2002 and 2003 -- caused by infected animals drifting in from Zimbabwe.

The outbreaks threatened to destroy Botswana's profitable cattle industry.

LT. GEN. MOMPATI MERAFHE, BOTSWANA FOREIGN AFFAIRS MINISTER: About two years ago, we have had to slaughter 13,000 head of cattle -- destroy 13,000 head of cattle because of the outbreak of foot and mouth disease between us and Zimbabwe. We don't want to repeat that process.

You know, beef is the third biggest industry in this country.

We produce to countries like members of the EU, France and Germany, the U.K. are some of our biggest consumers of our beef. And they've got very stringent, you know, stock disease control restrictions that they impose upon us.

The cattle industry is very fundamental to our lives as Batswana, because it is the only economy that takes the money into the pocket of even the rural dweller in the most remotest part of the country.

So that's why we are so passionate about the cattle industry.

NARRATOR: Japie Strauss, a farmer in northern Botswana, had spent decades establishing his farm and building up his herd.

STRAUSS: We're about thirty years on the farm now. This is our life. That's what I want to do all my life. I want to be a farmer; I want to farm. I didn't have the opportunity. I had to work and buy out of a salary a farm and build up a cattle herd and we did it eventually.

And when we thought, 'now we've got enough, now we can go and retire and we come to the farm' and we wasn't -- There was about six, seven years we were here and then foot and mouth come. And then it breaked us completely.

It took just a matter of hours to slaughter and bury the 305 Brahma cattle.

Strass-Mokateng Farm. Cattle buried -- 305.

Here lies my fortune. Underground after they killed the cattle.

This is where they dug a big hole here, a furrow actually like that, quite deep. They built a corridor from there up to here and they chase the cattle come in here, they shoot them here and bring the next lot in and kill them and after it was full they close it down. I wasn't here.

I couldn't stand and see that all your work of a lifetime is killed like that and buried underground.

I just couldn't stand it.