To prove whether error catastrophe /lethal mutagenesis is the primary antiviral mechanism of action of ribavirin against foot-and-mouth disease virus (FMDV). Ribavirin passage experiments were performed and supernatants of $Rp_1$ to $Rp_5$ were harvested. Morphological alterations as well as the levels of viral RNAs, proteins, and infectious particles in the BHK-21 cells infected using the supernatants of $Rp_1$ to $Rp_5$ and control were measured by microscope, real-time RT-PCR, western-blotting and plaque assays, respectively. The mutation frequency was measured by sequencing the complete P1- and 3D-encoding region of FMDV after a single round of virus infection from ribavirin-treated or untreated FMDV-infected cells. Ribavirin treatment for FMDV caused dramatically inhibition of multiplication in cell cultures. The levels of viral RNAs, proteins, and infectious particles in the BHK-21 cells infected were more greatly reduced along with the passage from $Rp_1$ to $Rp_5$, moreover, nucleocapsid protein could not be detected and no recovery of infectious virus in the supernatant or detection of intracellular viral RNA was observed at the $Rp_5$-infected cells. A high mutation rate, giving rise to an 8-and 11-fold increase in mutagenesis and resulting in some amino acid substitutions, was found in viral RNA synthesized at a single round of virus infection in the presence of ribavirin of $1000;{mu}M$ and caused a 99.7% loss in viral infectivity in contrast with parallel untreated control virus. These results suggest that the antiviral molecular mechanism of ribavirin is based on the lethal mutagenesis/error catastrophe, that is, the ribavirin is not merely an antiviral reagent but also an effective mutagen.