TIMELINE - Outbreak of foot and mouth disease in Britain

(Reuters) - Farmers in Britain resumed sending animals to slaughter on Thursday after a ban on the movement of livestock to prevent an outbreak of foot and mouth disease from spreading was lifted in most of the country.

The return of the disease has raised fears of a repeat of a foot and mouth crisis in 2001 that devastated farming and cost Britain about 8.5 billion pounds.

Here is a chronology of key events since the disease was found last week:

August 3, 2007 - Britain's agriculture department confirms finding the virus of foot and mouth disease in cattle on a farm near Guildford in Surrey.

August 4 - The United States, Ireland and Japan ban British pork imports. Britain tries to contain the outbreak by culling cattle at the farm.

August 5 - A laboratory run by Merial Animal Health Ltd, jointly owned by U.S. drugmaker Merck & Co. Inc and France's Sanofi-Aventis, around 5 miles (8 km) from where a herd of cattle was infected, are sealed off.

August 6 - The European Union, South Korea and Russia ban British livestock, meat and dairy exports.

August 7 - Veterinarians confirm a second case of the disease within a 10-km radius (6-mile) protection zone set up around the farm where the disease first broke out.

-- In a short preliminary report, government investigators find a "strong probability" that the strain of virus behind the outbreak came from the two research labs near the site of the infection. It also said there was also a "real possibility" that the release of the virus involved "human movement". Merial rejects the report's suggestions the next day.