Intro

When this event hit the headlines I was around 5-6 years old, although I didn’t really grasp what it was, I could tell from my parents' faces that it wasn’t a good thing. All the Beef burgers in the freezer were thrown in the bin, and we were only allowed filet fish whenever we went to Mcdonald's. Subconsciously this must have influenced my becoming a vegetarian in my early teens, we weren’t big meat eaters in my family anyway, but burgers, sausages, mince meat chillies were welcome treats. Nowadays there are hundreds of veggie friendly options but back in 2001/2002 it was a little bit more difficult. Well that’s enough talking about my dietary choices let’s get started with the video. Piles of bodies are burning in fields all throughout the British countryside. It is the 1990s and this hellish scene is scaring the British pride in their farming products. This mass culling is understandably no one's first choice, but it seems the only way to stamp out an animal borne disease that has made the leap to humans. The cattle farming industry makes up 38% of the UKs entire agricultural product, and the last thing the country needs is piles of dead cows. The disease is always fatal with a prognosis of roughly 13 months after onset of symptoms. It is officially known as Bovine spongiform encephalopathy, which if consumed in infected meat can cause Variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease, more casually known as mad cow disease. Welcome to scandal, a plainly difficult documentary series. //// It’s the mid 1940s and the United Kingdom as well as the rest of the world is collecting itself after nearly 6 years of devastation .

Background

War has bludgeoned the uk economy, industry has been stripped of resources and manpower, and a victorious yet now poor nation seek some way to move forward. The country is in debt and has been operating under rationing for many of the essentials needed for the average Britishish person's diet, sugar, meat, fats and cheese. At the start of the war Britain was importing half its meat, 80% of fruit and 70% of cereals and fats from abroad. As such this became the wake up call for the UK to become more food Independent as well as build thriving rural communities and economies. Successive governments fostered this economic development, the growth continued in the 1970s with the UKs joining of the EEC. Now there was an even bigger reason to farm more, tariff free trading. The UK by the 1980s had achieved over 100% domestic milk demand and 97% meat demand, quite a turn around of importing 50% some 40 years before. This market was worth £5 billion to the UK economy. But how was this turn around achieved, well glad you asked as this would prove to be a vital cog in the wheel of disaster. The uk had made use of a scheme of selective breeding to create cattle with the ability to produce more milk coupled with a high protein diet. The industry found that soya based feed was good but not good enough, instead they discovered that meat and bone meal yelded as good as it even better milk produce than the more natural alternative. And what’s better is that because it was made of animal waste products it was much cheaper. You may ask what those waste products are well.... You're not going to like it. Imagine every bit of livestock that you think would normally go in the bin, you know bones, blood, pretty much anything left over, but vitally the brain as well, it was all mashed together to make feed, much of the live stock products used were from cows, yea basically they were feeding the cows, cows. The high protein feed was mainly for increasing milk production and as such dairy cows were the most unknowingly cannibalistic population in the farming industry. But these dairy cows would eventually find themselves in the slaughterhouse as around 2⁄3 were eventually used for beef production. For cattle to enter the human food chain they had to be killed in a licenced slaughterhouse, but the numbers in the country had dwindled to around 1,000 registered premises. The side effect of this was that cattle had to travel longer distances, now I’m Not going to describe the slaughter process but it should be said that the waste products that made up the meat and bone feed came as a byproduct from the rendering process part of the whole meat production line. Rendering is the process of recovering any waste products from livestock, and vitally for our story in the 1980s was completely unregulated in the UK.

A Strange Illness

1983 an Unknown illness It is October 1983 veterinarian, Mr Ray Williams is attending a cow that has been exhibiting strange behaviour. He is at Colham farm in Wiltshire, and over the next year Williams will see at least five cows exhibiting the same symptoms. The animals are showing signs of distress, shaking, poor coordination and trembling of the head. The cows although showing a normal hunger were loosing weight. The animals were destroyed and thus had no autopsy, but these few victims would prove to be just the start of this mysterious condition. In January 1985 Mr Williams discovered another cow from the same farm but a different unit exhibiting the same strange symptoms. Not wanting to miss out on finding the cause he sent this cow, which would be named cow 36 to Veterinary School at Langford. The animal was slaughtered and given a partial post morten in the report the cow was stated to have: ‘progressive nervous signs, hyperaesthesia, tremors, mania and hind leg ataxia'. But whilst Williams was dealing with the strange illness little did he know that another farm called pitsham, over a hundred miles away In Sussex had an animal showing the same strange symptoms. Cow 133 as it was officially known, was observed in December 1984 to have lost its coordination and experienced severe shaking. 6 weeks later it had died, much to the confusion of local veterinarian Mr David Bee. Bee like Williams at the same time would see several More cows showing the same symptoms, almost like it was spreading amongst the farm's population. Bee coined the new illness stent farm syndrome after the owner farmer Peter stent and sent a number of tissue samples to the central veterinary laboratory. The first officially diagnosed case of BSE was from Cow 142, Pathologist Carol Richardson examined the cow and saw similarities with the samples that bee had sent in previously. She diagnosed the illness as a bovine scrapie Which was confirmed by The Consultant Pathology Unit. As a side note scrapie is a known condition as early as 1732, it is a fatal, degenerative disease affecting the nervous systems of sheep and goats, but is not known to be transmissible to humans, as such infected meat can be consumed. The name come from the behaviour of an infected individual scraping their bodies against rocks. Cow 142s autopsy results would be reviewed a number of times, one such was in June 1987, when it was confirmed the illness was a form of transmissible spongiform encephalopathy, it was given the name Bovine spongiform encephalopathy All the less of a mouthful BSE. A couple of months later the UK government would accept the new disease. But although the cause of the strange symptoms was discovered, an unknown number of cattle had been infected. Although the early signs were there from 1983 it is now thought to have occurred in cows as early as the 1970s. It’s very likely it was spread through the meat and bone meal that was fed to cattle, and in the late 1980s the numbers of infected animals would soar as more and more unknowingly infected cattle were slaughtered and rendered. ** However when the causal link is as suggested, in 1988 meat bone meal was banned for feeding to cattle, but by now hundreds of thousands of cattle were potentially infected with mad cow disease. The British Ministry of Agriculture accepted it had a new disease, but was slow to act, only banning offal for human consumption in 1989, which was suggested by the Southwood report. The Thatcher government sorry I said that wrong didn’t I the THATCHER government, were adamant that British beef was safe among the concerns over BSE, saying that the illness couldn’t jump specifies. But experiments at Oxford university had already shown the disease could infect other species, when in 1988 mice were infected with bse via a brain to brain injection. The Southwood report also advised the government to slaughter and dispose of any cow that was suspected to have transmitted the disease, the government complied but only offered 50% compensation to farmers. Which seems like a half arsed measure especially when BSE can take several years to manifest any symptoms after infection. The lack of financial incentive led to many turning a blind eye to potentially infected animals, with some farmers later being accused of selling the cattle off the books. However this seemed a bit too little too late as the USA in 1989 banned British beef from its shores. The government by 1990 was assuring the British public and the wider world market that British beef was safe to eat. The conservative government said There was no evidence of catching the disease through the consumption of meat, well until there was.

Max the Cat

Max the cat and the jump to humans. Enter a Siamese cat called max, the feline had for most of its life been given a diet of British beef. Not so strange, however what made Max unique is that he had begun exhibiting symptoms congruent with a feline form of BSE. Max was confused, losing weight, had trouble keeping balance and the signature of the illness uncontrolled quivering. The cat become the first known case outside of a laboratory of BSE jumping species, scientists knew it was possible, in the same year they had shown mice could develop the condition through eating infected food. BSE had jumped species, max and a number of other cats including a tiger becoming infected showed the risk of transmitting the disease through consumption of infected meat. Despite the ever growing storm clouds of thousands of cows developing BSE, and after a 100% compensation scheme to farmers, tons of meat was being destroyed, the UK government doubled down with the line that British beef is safe. Secretary of State for the Environment John Gummer, appeared on TV virtually forcing his daughter to eat a beef burger, nothing like dragging your children into politics at a young age! Guess what happened to him?? They made him a member of the House of Lords...... Anyways, no matter how much head in the sand stances the government made, by 1992 an estimated 100,000 cattle had become infected with BSE. This amounted to roughly 3 in every 1000 British cows had been infected. Between 1992 and 1993 some 4.4 million cattle were slaughtered and disposed of mainly by burning the corpses in the fields. This proved to be financially decimating for the British farming sector, and as such the government continued to claim the safety of British beef, with the chief medical officer reaffirming the safe to eat party line. Even though the NUmbers of the infected reached the peak of the outbreak, the human tragedy was yet to unfold. In late 1994 a few young people in Britain were showing symptoms of a rare illness, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. So rare is cij that between 50-60 people have The disease per year in the uk, well what’s so strange you might think, rare Illnesses exist, what is odd is that traditionally the condition rarely affects the under 55s, the new victims were nearly 30 years younger. During the late 1980s and early 90s there were at least 4 cases of farm workers all over the age of 55 being taken ill with cjd, a very strange coincidence. It was looking like there was a vocational link to contracting cjd. A 19 year old man named James Churchill would die in may 1995 apparently linked to the rare illness. A younger 16 year old girl had been identified around the same time but James was the first of the under 55 cases to succumb to the illness. Needless to say unusual deaths in young people warrant thorough autopsies, James Ironside, a pathologist at the National CJD Surveillance Unit, saw that the brains of these patients showed unusual spongiform symptoms. He named the condition variant CJD (vCJD). In total in 1995 4 people would die from vcjd, but in September the government stated insufficient evidence to link BSE and vCJD. But eventually on 20th March 1996 the government would begrudgingly capitulate, and Stephen Dorrell, the Secretary of State for Health said there was a link between vcjd and infected beef. 7 days later the EU would enact a ban on British beef. But why did children get so much of the issues, well the THATCHER government in the 1980s had removed the requirement for school dinners to have any nutritional value, as such schools were using mechanically recovered meat, which was not Much better than the meat bone meal. In response to the EU ban on British Beef the UK sought out to legally challenge the export ban, and introduced a scheme to slaughter and destroy all cattle over the age of 30 months. This rift between the UK and EU during this period, which heavily affected the UK farming economy, has been argued as one of the sparks that started the Brexit movement, of which a large number of farmers voted for in the EU referendum. Millions of cattle burned in the fields of the UK countryside, as the UK government attempted to get a handle on the outbreak. However beef was still on the menu in British Butchers, albeit not allowed to be sold on the bone, but people were still at risk, in 1997 local councils stopped serving beef in roughly 2,000 schools. In 2000 another scary discovery was made. A baby girl born to a mother with vCJD was also found to have contracted the disease, showing it was transmittable to the fetus during pregnancy. Over the next 20 years 178 people would go on to contract and die of the disease. Lets just quickly pause here to discuss VCJD and how it affects the human body.

VCJD

VCJD Contraction of VCJD has appeared to be a bit of a lottery of genetics, as millions ate infected meat but there are under 200 known deaths, clearly the odds are low, although you'd never know your chances unless you take a spin on the roulette wheel of death. Vcdj is caused by things called Prions officially called proteinaceous infectious particles. They are misfolded proteins that have the ability to transmit their misfolded shape onto normal variants of the same protein. In an uninfected person prions begin as a string of amino acids that then fold themselves into a 3-dimensional shape, they occur in multiple tissues in the body and are thought to play a role in transporting messages between certain brain cells. Sometimes during protein folding issues can happen and the prion protein can't be used by the body, these are usually recycled but can cause issues if a large enough quantity builds up. After eating infected meat the malicious prions infect healthy brain proteins in the body, they then build up on the brain and cause more misfolded prions, in doing so this kills off brain cells. Naturally the dying of the brain cells creates reduced cognitive and physical functions. What is scary is that these dangerous prions can survive in the nerve tissue, such as the brain or spinal cord for a long time after death, which if eaten spreads the disease. Potentially Vcdj can lie dormant in your body for many years as such some countries have banns of British citizens donating blood if they lived during the crisis, but was there any accountability for the continued sale and denial of infected meat?

Inquiry

The inquiry. At the height of the disaster an inquiry was announced in december 1997, the new labor government under the premiership of Tony Blair had been in power since may the same year. In its executive summary published in October 2000, by Nick Brown, the secretary for agriculture at the time, the enquiry stated: The public was repeatedly reassured that it was safe to eat beef. Some statements failed to explain that the views expressed were subject to proper observance of the precautionary measures which had been introduced to protect human health against the possibility that BSE might be transmissible. These statements conveyed the message not merely that beef was safe but that BSE was not transmissible. The inquiry also slated the government for its lack of consideration for the amount of infected material needed to be eradicated from meat: More serious was a failure to give rigorous consideration to the amount of infective material that was proving capable of transmitting the disease. The false assumption was made that any cross-contamination of cattle feed in feed mills from pig or poultry feed containing ruminant protein would be on too small a scale to matter As the 90s came to a close and the numbers of infected cattle were reduced as the population of cows were essentially eradicated from the UK, restrictions on beef were slowly raised. Meat on the bone and offal were restricted well into the mid 2000’s even for UK markets, and the EU would lift its ban in 2006, after a 10 year embargo on British beef, although France continued to impose a ban on British beef illegally long after.

Summary

Plainly’s Summary Personally it seemed like the government at the time which was during the reigns of two conservate prime ministers THATCHER, and John Major, were more than willing to play down and in some cases outright ignore the warning signs to the risk of millions of British Citizens. All of this was to try and prop up a significant portion of the UK economy,Incompetence, Profit over saftey or a bit of both will be up to you to decide, but regardless many hundreds would pay the price and maybe still will. All videos on the channel are creative commons Attribution-ShareAlike. Plainly difficult videos are produced by me John, in a wet and windy suburban Southeast corner of London, uk. Help the channel grow by liking commenting and subscribing! Check out my twitter for all sorts of photos and odd and sods, as well as hints on future videos! I've got patreon and youtube membership as well so if you fancy check them out! All that's left to say is thank you for watching! https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/3477/1/beckm32007.pdf https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/written-answers/1989/jun/13/bse-southwood-report https://www.independent.co.uk/news/bse-scientist-was-censored-1288041.html?amp https://web.archive.org/web/20061215075506/http://www.aphis.usda.gov/lpa/issues/bse/bse_photogallery.html https://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20060802142310/http://www.bseinquiry.gov.uk/