In the late 1980s it became apparent to those inside the Ministry of Agriculture (MAFF) that the new, rapidly growing epidemic of BSE was distributed very widely, and almost randomly, throughout the national herd of cattle. Worse still, because the incubation period was likely to be years, the pattern of the epidemic actually represented the level of infection several years before. Furthermore no test was available to determine which animals were incubating BSE.
Containment by a selective slaughter policy, as successfully practised with 'foot and mouth' disease, was clearly already impossible. This left two choices: slaughter the whole herd of 13 million cattle, at a cost estimated at 20 billion pounds, or adopt piecemeal measures to contain the problem. It is not difficult to see how the latter course was adopted, but with this containment option came an unknown risk to the public. The consequences of that decision are with us today with a crisis that has damaged the farming industry, undermined the reputation of the UK, and devastated the lives of growing numbers of people affected by the human epidemic of vCJD.
While the initial decision to contain rather than slaughter might be understandable, if wrong in hindsight, what followed next is harder to explain, and indeed harder to excuse.
Social scientist Kerstin Dressel has produced a meticulously researched PhD thesis (and hence a public document) at Lancaster University that focuses on how uncertain scientific knowledge was translated into political decision making during the BSE saga. Enlivened by candid off-the-record remarks from scientists and politicians together with cutting analysis, it makes extraordinary reading.
As a German Dressel is able to take an objective outsider's view of UK political culture: a culture of deference, of discretion, where decision making is opaque, where committees work by consensus, informality, and 'Chatham House' rules. She draws many interesting contrasts with the German system but the document published today is almost entirely the result of her interview of over 30 politicians, civil servants and scientists in the UK. It gives a clear view of how errors could almost certainly be expected to come.
The early years of the crisis took place under Margaret Thatcher's premiership, and Dressel makes particular reference to the 'Thatcherian' culture, of relentless cutting of public spending, of an iron grip on the civil service, of a willingness to give business a free rein.
Dressel paints a picture of scientific advisers picked because they were not experts in transmissible spongiform encephalopathies. She reveals how Advisory Committees were essentially fed pre-prepared policy by government, notably the ruminant feed ban and the specified bovine offals (SBO) ban, which they then endorsed.
Although the key policy decisions were made at the highest level by a 'small group' including the Prime Minister, the Chief Medical Officer and the Chief Veterinary Officer (not full cabinet), policy appeared to be driven by the civil servants of the Ministry of Agriculture Fisheries and Food (MAFF).
MAFF controlled what research was done, and more importantly what was not done, and also influenced which scientists were funded. MAFF even controlled access to BSE material (the thousands of severed heads of diseased cattle were legally MAFF property) and incredibly, for many years they denied access to leading scientists in the US.
"For a long time" says one UK scientist, I presumed that they [MAFF] were carrying out the research for themselves, but they were just not telling anybody... But I found that this was not correct. I found that large amounts of the research which was most obvious was not carried out".
Dressel explains that once the 'precautionary measures' of the ruminant feed ban and the SBO ban were in place, it was as though the risk itself actually disappeared. Eventually the government came to believe it's own propaganda. This is surely the only explanation for one of the most extraordinary and enduring images from the whole BSE story, the Agriculture Minister John Gummer feeding his daughter a beef burger at the height of the epidemic.
The actual gap in scientific evidence had been transformed, evidently for political and economic reasons, into a confident assertion of safety. In 1990 John Gummer felt able to state "Beef is safe. ...British beef is... not a public health risk and can be eaten with complete confidence - a view endorsed by the European Community's top scientists".
It was at the time something of a mystery that there were not more scientists willing to speak out. Dressel spells out the reasons. Those who did were vilified, some had careers and reputations systematically destroyed. Many kept quiet simply for fear of losing their career or having funding cut. All of the MAFF scientists were effectively gagged by the Official Secrets Act. Others scientists simply believed that the government was trying to act in the best interests of the country.
The thesis is damning. It confirms all that I have heard myself from leading scientists and ex-MAFF employees. It explains how the public was falsely reassured by a government that had come to believe its own propaganda, and by a Ministry that was willing to destroy open scientific debate.
From a journalist's point of view the anonymity of many quotations is the greatest weakness of the thesis, and yet ironically perhaps this very anonymity allows a for a kind of truth that even the momentous BSE Inquiry may find difficult to provide
This thesis will be of great interest to political scientists and decision makers, social scientists, research scientists and historians. It is another important piece of the jigsaw.
(copywrite) Adrian Holme, 2000. All rights reserved. adrian@aholme.demon.co.uk