UK Government Systematically Lied to the British
Public About the Mad Cow Epidemic

From: "B. Elswood" <belswood@hotmail.com>

A decade or so ago a British Conservative government minister fed a "mad
cow" hamburger to his young daughter to assuage public fears about
contracting prion disease...and now public apologies are in order and even
given.

But isn't the same kind of lulling taking place today with US
government agriculture and health officials? Unlike the Brits we have prion
disease in our wild game (deer and elk) as well as "domesticated" herds (elk
farms and millions of sheep). The carcasses of infected animals, for the
most part, are still not burned but are eaten or otherwise enter the food
chain in order for ranching profits to be maximized. We can't realistically
cull all the potentially infected American sheep and start over again with
"clean" herds because the sheep browse the same (usually BLM public land)
forage that the prion-infected wild deer and elk browse and would just
passage the disease back to the uninfected sheep herds.

There is evidence(CJD showing up in young deer and elk hunters, for example,
and the spread of infected game herds across growing geographical areas [Colorado,
Wyoming and now the Dakotas and game farms all over]) that indicates the problem
to be obviously growing and not disappearing; yet it is still publicly and
officially ignored apparently out of economic concerns for the hunting and
ranching industries with the sad-sack rationalization (that will lead to
further apologies someday but this time by US government officials) that
sheep and elk/deer prion disease cannot be transmitted to humans...

Obviously, when so much power and money is threatened, no one learns from
prior mistakes but say with that old French Madame, "after the Deluge, we'll
be dead anyway!"

http://www.nytimes.com/2000/10/27/world/27BRIT.html

New York Times, Friday, October 27, 2000

British Wrongly Lulled People on 'Mad Cow,' Report Finds

By Sarah Lyall

LONDON, Oct. 26 - For 10 years, British officials consistently misled
the public by deliberately playing down the possibility that mad-cow
disease could be transmitted to humans, an official report said today.

The 4,000-page report, published after a three-year investigation, took
care not to single out individuals for blame in its chronicle of
government missteps and misstatements.

But its authors, led by Lord Phillips, severely criticized the "culture
of secrecy" that characterized the government's response to a crisis
that has wreaked havoc with Britain's once-proud beef industry, forced
the slaughter of almost four million cows and led to the deaths so far
of 77 Britons.

In its effort not to alarm consumers, the report said, the government
sought to insulate them from unpleasant information, using "an approach
whose object was sedation."

Acknowledging its own responsibility for the human suffering, the Labor
government said it would pay victims' medical costs and compensate their
families. Farmers have already got billions for the destruction of their
herds.

The disease is thought to be caused by putting animal protein into cow
feed, a practice since banned.

In addition to the 77 who have died, seven people are known to be
suffering from the human form of mad- cow disease, a variant of
Creutzfeldt- Jakob disease that results in progressive dementia and loss
of physical functions, leaving the brain with a spongelike consistency.
Mad-cow disease - technically bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or
B.S.E. - is always fatal.

Officials said they still had no way of knowing how many Britons were
likely to come down with the disease.

Government officials say they are now confident that after the strict
slaughter program, the disease has been all but eradicated from British
herds. But Creutzfeldt-Jakob can have an extremely long incubation - 25
years or more - and people who ate infected beef in the early 1980's may
be still at risk.

"My own personal belief would be that we are more likely looking in the
region of a few hundred to several thousand more" victims, Prof. Peter
Smith, acting head of the government's advisory committee on the
disease, said on television this morning. "But it must be said we can't
rule out tens of thousands."

A former Conservative prime minister, John Major, who in 1995 told the
House of Commons there "is no scientific evidence that B.S.E. can be
transmitted to humans or that eating beef causes it in humans,"
responded to the report by saying, "All of us must accept our
responsibilities for shortcomings."

Tim Yeo, the agriculture spokesman for the Conservatives, the party in
power during the decade covered by the report, told Parliament, "I am
truly sorry for what happened, and I apologize."

But apologies - even coupled with compensation - are not enough, said
0Roger Tomkins, whose daughter, Clare, died from Creutzfeldt-Jakob in
April 1998, at 24. The public's trust had been "betrayed to save money,"
Mr. Tomkins said.

The first diagnosis of mad-cow disease was made in 1986, when afflicted
cows began to behave strangely and die suddenly. For the next decade,
officials assured a worried public that there was no evidence the
disease could spread to humans. All the while, today's report pointed
out, there were mounting indications to the contrary.

According to the report, produced at a cost of $42 million, the
government failed to inform the public about the new evidence because of
"a consuming fear of provoking an irrational public scare."

It was this fear, the report adds, that caused a government veterinary
pathologist to label "confidential" his first memo on mad-cow disease in
1986; that led John Gummer, then the agriculture minister, to make a
show of publicly feeding a hamburger to his 4-year-old daughter,
Cordelia, in 1990; and that led Britain's chief medical officer in 1996
to declare, "I myself will continue to eat beef as part of a varied and
balanced diet."

At the same time, government policy was marred by bureaucratic bungling,
a lack of coordination between departments and the fact that the
Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food had two somewhat
contradictory missions: to protect consumers and to support the beef
industry.