[A-List] UK corporate state: BSE scandal

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

This must surely rank as one of the most disgusting spectacles in the recent
history of corporate statist prerogative over basic human rights. When the
story broke in the early 1990s of how there might be a link between "mad cow
disease" a new variant of Creuzfeld-Jakob disease in humans, the agriculture
lobby and its state guardians went into a frenzy of denial, until enough
scientists had broken ranks to demand that some version of the precautionary
principle should be applied. Then the Major government capitulated and
admitted that there was indeed a strong possibility of a link. By then, of
course, tons of BSE-infected meat had been consumed within the UK and
exported around the world.

After the government's admission the major supermarket chains voluntarily
withdrew British beef from their shelves, while butchers supplied direct
from organic or grass-fed herds (the disease was reckoned to originate in
the use of sheep remains in cattle feed, the sheep having been infected with
scrapie) suffered from the public fear of eating beef. There were a few
well-publicised episodes of trading standards officers discovering that some
butchers selling "minced lamb" were in fact giving their customers up to 50%
beef, to which came the response, "but it's difficult to clean the mincing
machines properly"! Within a few short months, however, Asda (now owned by
Walmart) was running campaigns saying "We're backing British beef", making
its consumption a matter of patriotism rather than personal safety. Soon
consumption patterns returned to something near normal, aside from the many
born-again vegetarians that had been created during the crisis.

Last year the Blair government published the report of the official inquiry
into the crisis, exonerating the Major government of all blame. Ministers
may have made mistakes, we were told, but they were committed in good faith.
And that was the end of it. The contrast between how the British media
treated that report and how it was reported on, for example, Deutsche Welle,
was startling. German newscasters pored over the report, making the links in
the chain of decisionmaking, tracing ministerial responsibility wherever
possible and explaining in detail who said what, when, where, why, and what
was done about it, etc. The same was true of Italy's RAI. In other words,
there has been a monumental cover-up conducted with the connivance of the
British news media, which remains happy to look kindly upon the toffs of the
Countryside Alliance whose leaders bear large responsibility for the entire
BSE scandal.


'BSE meat' used in cheap food
GRAEME SMITH
The Herald, 11 October 2002

AN investigation into how BSE might have entered the food chain has
confirmed 80% of the MRM (mechanically recovered meat) thought to be
responsible was used in catering and economy foods like burgers and mince,
which ended up in hospitals and schools.

Stricter controls were introduced in 1995 when MRM from cattle backbone was
banned from use in meat products.

However, the study commissioned by the Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory
Committee, confirms previous estimates that about 5000 tonnes of beef MRM
was used annually before then, mostly in catering and retail economy foods
such as burgers and frozen mince, but not in burgers from major fast food
outlets.

Beefburgers may have had up to 30% MRM and frozen mince 20%, but it is not
clear what an infective dose it or what affects human susceptibility to BSE.