Foot-and-mouth in Europe – level 1
08-04-2025 15:00
Austria closes 24 small roads at the border with Hungary and Slovakia. Bad animal sickness called foot-and-mouth is in those countries. Austria wants to stop it.
Slovakia finds sick animals on three farms. Hungary finds the disease, too. Soldiers help farmers clean the area. The sickness does not hurt people. But it makes cows, pigs, and sheep very sick. The animals get fever and pain in the mouth. Farmers cannot sell sick animals. They must kill them.
At a few open roads, Austria checks people and cars. They must go over a rug to clean their shoes or tires. Police also look for meat. Austria wants to stop the sickness from coming in.
Difficult words: sickness (when a person or animal is not healthy), fever (when your body becomes hotter than normal), rug (a flat thing on the ground to clean shoes).
You can watch the original video in the Level 3 section.
How do soldiers and police help prevent the disease, and what symptoms appear in the affected cows, pigs, and sheep?
LEARN 3000 WORDS with NEWS IN LEVELS
News in Levels is designed to teach you 3000 words in English. Please follow the instructions
below.
How to improve your English with News in Levels:

Test
- Do the test at Test Languages.
- Go to your level. Go to Level 1 if you know 1-1000 words. Go to Level 2 if you know 1000-2000 words. Go to Level 3 if you know 2000-3000 words.

Reading
- Read two news articles every day.
- Read the news articles from the day before and check if you remember all new words.

Listening
- Listen to the news from today and read the text at the same time.
- Listen to the news from today without reading the text.

Writing
- Answer the question under today’s news and write the answer in the comments.

Speaking
- Choose one person from the Skype section.
- Talk with this person. You can answer questions from Speak in Levels.
Stock images by Depositphotos