Sir

We write to correct some factual inaccuracies in the Correspondence by R. G. Eddy (Nature 412, 477; 2001), which itself was a response to your Opinion article “Lessons from an epidemic” (Nature 411, 977; 2001).

Eddy suggests that the Imperial College group did not make the details of their research on models of foot-and-mouth virus transmission available to stakeholders until the publication of our paper in Science on 12 April. This is incorrect: we sent details of our preliminary analyses to the UK chief veterinary officer on 16 March.

In addition, we were the only group to present — on 23 March — a detailed analysis of the epidemic and potential control options to stakeholders including officials from the UK's Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (now the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), the Office of Science and Technology and the Food Standards Agency. Our presentation included details of the modelling techniques we used.

Since then, we have regularly presented new, updated results to the UK chief scientist's foot-and-mouth disease advisory group (which includes teams from Edinburgh, Cambridge and Pirbright), and have had several discussions with the Royal Society and the National Farmers' Union.