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

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

If British farmers were culpable and broke the law, their government was absolutely criminal in its behavior during the BSE/nvCJD crisis. At every point, the government corrupted evidence, concealed facts, and delayed conveying crucial information to their nation and the world. The Parliament mortgaged potentially hundreds of thousands of lives to protect its own public image, the profits of the beef industries, and the interests of the national economy as the estimated cost of replacing six million infected cattle was 30 billion pounds.

After learning of the first confirmed case of Mad Cow Disease in 1986, the British Department of Health kept the information from the public for 11 months, and even then only announced the findings in an obscure veterinary journal. A 1996 critique published in the prestigious British medical journal, Lancet, exposed the problematic way scientific research is produced and distributed, such that ministers appoint expert committees, meet in private with them, and either conceal controversial data or release disinformation. 13 In the spirit of U.S. "veggie libel" or "food disparagement" laws that criminalize criticism of the safety of agricultural products (see below), British officials tried to intimidate and silence their critics. They attempted to lock up scientific data, while threatening researchers with prosecution if they released any damaging information to the public. Clearly, they had something to hide.

Although the government had enough evidence in the mid-1 980s to warrant an immediate ban on ruminant rendering practices, they waited until 1989 to proscribe brain, spinal cord, thymus, spleen, tonsils, and some offal in feed. Even then, they pretended that tissues and other parts of cattle were safe, but knew full well that infection could spread throughout the animal's body which was being used in a wide variety of products, from cosmetics to vaccines. Using bogus scientific data and erroneous assumptions, the government issued numerous false pronouncements about the safety of meat. Uninformed by the views of any BSE experts, the 1989 Southwood Report, for example, found no evidence that TSEs could jump species, or that BSE could spread to human beings. The report confidently announced that cattle, rather than human beings, would be a"dead-end host." With brash arrogance, the committee concluded it is "most unlikely that BSE will have any implications for human health" Ominously, the report also stated that"if our assessment of these likelihoods [of possible human infection] are incorrect, the implications would be extremely seriOus."14

In the meantime, cases of BSE were mounting dramatically, climbing to 10,000 by April 1990.TSEs were quickly spreading to other species, and ever more human beings were contracting nvCJD. In response, London schools refused the nation's beef, the European Union took measures against British beef exports, and England initiated the slaughter of over a million cows. By the end of August, 1994, BSE cases exceeded 137,000, over six times the number the Southwood Committee predicted as a "worst case scenario."