In March 1997, outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) affected pigs in Taiwan. To assess the potential risk of transmission and spread of FMD, a survey on normal movement pattern in livestock farms was carried out in Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan. In a total of 20 farms (9 for pig farrow-to-finish operations, 6 beef cattle farms and 5 dairy cattle farms) participating in the survey, all the movements to or off the farms (e,g. animals, materials and people / number of contacts and destination) were recorded daily over a period of one week using a questionnaire. The movements were classified into 4 grades: risk 4 (very high) to risk 1 (low), respectively, assigned to the types of contacts. The movements off the farm were more frequent than those to the farm in each livestock farm. In particular the movements off the pig farms were concentrated on animal shipping to slaughterhouse with grade risk 4. Mean distance of shipping also extended over a radius of more than 20 km of the control zone for FMD emergency in Japan. Should an outbreak of FMD be detected in a pig farm, FMDV might, therefore, have already spread prior to the diagnosis of the disease over the FMD control zone.