Cows, capitalism, and cover-ups: The politics and economics of mad cow disease

Tamara: Journal of Critical Postmodern Organization Science, 2001 by Best, Steven

Abstract

The world changed in 1986 when Mad Cow Disease showed up in cattle and began to kill human beings too. The destructive consequences of Mad Cow Disease have little to do with natural processes, and everything to do with social process, with how the meat and diary industries, driven by profit imperatives, have gained global hegemonic power. Mad Cow Disease provides a crucial lens into the operations and effects of these destructive industries which precede and transcend this one phenomenon that has become a compelling force with which to reckon. It beckons us to a sane and healthy mode of agriculture, or points the way toward our collective doom.

"Those who love sausage and the law

should never watch either being made"

(Otto von Bismarck, German politician)

"The time bomb of the twentieth century

equivalent of the bubonic plague ticks

away."(Richard Lacey, British microbiolo

gist and BSE expert)

"So is it just coincidence,

Or are these deaths the first of many?

Will BSE, slow death, advance,

In humans and their progeny?

One thing is sure; our precious State

Won't tell us 'till it's much too late!" ("Mad Cows and Englishmen," C. Marsden)

In 1986, the first signs of "Mad Cow Disease," a fatal brain disease in cattle, appeared in Britain. Known more technically as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE), the government and beef industries went into a full-scale process of cover-up and denial, assuring the public there was no human health risked posed by the disease. On March 20, 1996, however, after ten years of government lies and evasion, British Health Secretary Stephen Dorrel announced to his stunned colleagues in the House of Commons that scientists had discovered a new variant of a Mad Cow type disease in ten human victims. Dorrel stated that "the most likely explanation at present" for the country's mounting cases of the growing human affliction - (new variant) Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (nvCJD) -- was BSE-infected cattle.1

The consumption of beef dramatically declined throughout the continent, the British beef market collapsed, the European Union banned exports of British cattle, and the credibility of the UK and its scientific advisors was shredded. The chairman of the government's BSE advisory committee warned that the number of human victims could climb into the hundreds of thousands. A new plague had crept into society.

At the same time, word of the dangers of Mad Cow Disease finally trickled toward American shores and U.S. citizens learned the horrifying truths about how meat is processed through the methods of modern agriculture. Utterly naive, the American public heard about a brain disease fatal to cattle and human beings alike. They understood that cows - herbivores by nature - were being transformed into carnivores, indeed, cannibals, through standard industry practices of rendering, the grinding up of dead cattle as cheap protein feed for living cattle.

On March 29, 1996, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) and Federal Drug Agency (FDA), largely responsible for making sure the public remained ignorant of the deadly dangers lurking in their meat supply, assured the American people that Mad Cow Disease was a British problem only.They announced more rigorous inspection of live cattle imported from Britain, improved BSE detection policies, and regulations to prohibit feeding ruminant (hoofed, cud-chewing animals with multi-chambered stomachs) animals such as sheep, goats, and cows to other ruminants. What they failed to mention, among other things, was that infected British cattle had already thoroughly penetrated the American food supply (indeed the entire globe), that rendering was commonplace in America, and that diseases similar to BSE had already affected other animals in the states. Throughout the 1990s, European nations also insisted Mad Cow Disease was a uniquely British problem, but in 1999, the contagion spread throughout the continent.

In Britain, the U.S., and throughout Europe, one finds the same pattern of industry deceptions and government disinformation and delays to bury the issue along with the millions of infected animals and scores of people dying from newly emerging TSE ("Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy") diseases affecting ever-more animal species. As a highly reactive, species boundary-busting, slow but inexorably moving menace, TSEs provoked widespread panic throughout Europe by late 2000. While there are still no officially classified cases of BSE in the U.S., there is strong evidence nonetheless that TSEs have widely infected animal populations and that cases of nvCJD have gone undiagnosed.

The Mad Cow phenomenon provides a compelling case study of the global hegemony of the meat industry, and vividly dramatizes the powerful grip this multi-billion dollar industry of mechanized massacre has over the political system, economies, health and education issues, and the minds of most citizens.2 While many see the meat and dairy industries as providing necessary sources of nutrition for the human diet, the reality is that they are among the most destructive industries on the planet. They are guilty of appalling forms of animal cruelty, massive environmental destruction, creating devastating health effects in human beings, and, now, unleashing a new global plague.