It started off as a discription of how to make a disaster of a disease such as BSE.
Bill Dilks a farmer talks about Annabel, the fresian cow that had got the first signs of BSE. She was walking away from the rest of the herd. Otherwise it would have been impossible to recognise the disease (i.e. in an auction or a market for instance). Annabel was born 3 years after the ban had been put in place to prevent infective material getting into her feed. By that time there should be no cattle becoming infected at all.
They cut to the Commission report that was given to the Government, long in advance of BSE, that stated that it would not be a good idea to ever feed material back to animals from whence it had come. The meat and bone meal had been allowed to continue in this manner.
Professor Richard Southwood stated that this mistake was exactly what had taken place with the production of BSE.
Professor Tim Lang spelled it out that the UK Government had basically done what it liked and not taken enough notice of advice from external experts. If all they do is to think about short term profits then they would not succeed.
Member of Parliament Mr. Campbell Savours (a member of the Health Committee) had been given information by serious and important members of the rendering and bovine feed industry making it clear that the regulations as put forward by the Government were not being carried out. He put the information through to the MAFF and asked for a reply. MAFF told him that there was no evidence that anything was happening of importance.
Last Year it turned out that, when the MAFF tried to find out what had happened to the offal that had been taken from cattle, only 50% could be accounted for. What happened to the rest? Did it just end up in bovine feed?
Tim Lang (who was previously a cattle farmer himself) came back on to say that it was actually quite surprising that they could account for that much! They did not seem to have any control on what was going on.
Prosper de Mulder (the major rendering company in the UK) sent a report to the MAFF in 1994 stating that there was "insatisfactory separations" of offals from slaughterhouse materials.
Also it had become clear that materials that originally were stated must not go into cattle feed were in fact going into the feed for pigs and poultry. By this time it had become clear that meat and bone meal that was going to the other animals was also going into the feed that was being fed to cattle. Also, the tallow made from the banned offals was also being fed back to cattle.
A lorry driver that could not admit his identity admitted that lorry loads of offals from both permitted and non-permitted sources were dumped together in the rendering plant and could not possibly have been separated. The man had pointed this out to the management and nothing was done.
In 1995 it was found that 3 out of 4 rendering firms were not complying with regulations required for the removal of SBOs.
The program then went on to explain how the methods used to remove the brain of the cow from the head came in 3 types. The brain could be removed from the head by being scooped out after the head had been cut in half with a saw, the brain could be washed out using high pressure hoses, of the brain could be sucked out through the foramen magna or the hole in the head used to kill the cow. All but the sucking method was bound the conaminate the surface of the bone with infected brain. It was shown that the MAFF must have been aware that this was going on and that the head was used to make further meat and bone meal (until the end of 1995) purely for 1 and yet the risk was taken.
David Statham from the Institute of Environmental Health Officers told MAFF not to split bovine heads using machines as this was bound to give rise to infectivity going over the carcass and he said that MAFF ignored them.
An organic farm that was prized by Prince Charles for its abilities was determined never to use meat and bone meal in the feed for its cattle. The owner notices, when some things were being delivered to the farm that the bottom of the lorry was full of a grey powder. The lorry driver simply said that it was meat and bone meal from another delivery. The organic farmer wrote and complained, saying that it would be impossible to avoid MBM if the lorries carried it in residues. The MAFF answered saying that the risk was "vanishingly small" but that lorries should be clean.
The idea that pig meal was being fed to cattle came to the fore (in 1995 - Ed). There were apparently no checks to avoid this and a farmer said that the meal was getting through to cattle.
A report of the Committee on the Animal Feed Industry, chaired by Lamming had made it clear that the Government should set up a permanent committee to oversee the industry and to report on it regularly. The Government refused to carry this out and gave them no reason as to why.
Tim Lang was certain that we simply had to get rid of this disease and that they should have been aware of this.
The Institute of Environmental Health had sent an 11 page document to Whitehall explaining why the directions by MAFF could not be reliably carried out by the industry concerning the prevention of infected parts returning to bovine feed. There was no reply.
Tim Lang stated that MAFF had been acting incompitently. How could we expect the EC to do anything but ban British beef? The British Government had their head in the sand. (this was basically saying that how could the EU expect us to carry out the things that we are promising to them when we have not policed them adequately before).
Graham Medley. A major statistician in the field had calculated that we have eaten 250,000 infected cattle born after the feed ban (and that this was specifically due to the incompitence of MAFF for the overseeing of their own regulations).
The program wound up by showing how, by imposing regulations that the industry could not carry out, not policing them, and allowing the industry to oversee itself, MAFF had permitted the BSE epidemic to continue for much longer than otherwise and to put many people at risk.
This was an extremely damning program and there can be little else to describe how it made clear the inadequacy and incompitence of MAFF action.
This program followed the World In Action one, which was only 1 hr earlier. It goes over the blunders that were made both by the original, hopeful committees and by the Government during its interpretation of the demands that were wanted.
It seems that the advice the committees gave was twisted by the Whitehall officials that were present as secretaries, the MAFF did not carry out the requests of the committees, many of the initial assessments made by the committees turned out to be wrong, that all the way through the epidemic the MAFF and Department of Health were giving the impression that there was no risk from BSE to humans (when they had no right to say this as there was not adequate data to do so), and that now we are in a bad situation with many people having possibly been infected with BSE.
All the way through the program there were reassurances by Government ministers, and Government officials that there was no risk to humans.
Mr. Gummer "perfectly safe" on TV
Jumped to Stephen Dorrell admitting to the House of Commons on 20th March 1996 that the new cases of CJD were linked to infection with BSE.
Ashford in Kent. The first farm where the cases had appeared had been 'Staurenden Manor Farm" in High Halden. The first case was seen by Colin Whittaker, the local vet, who said the case was send to the knackers yard. Over 18 months there were 7 more cases on the same farm. In July 1987 he was going to present the cases to the college of vets but was asked by MAFF not to say that the disease was 'scrapie-like'. MAFF were already sure that the disease would not be good news and had already seen cases appear from the North and West of England.
In June 1988 there was an official ban on the feeding of cattle any material derived from other cattle.
Lord Walton (one of the members of the Southwood Committee, he was a Labour MP previously) - he decided that it was highly improbable that it would cross to man but they had to admit that if it did the results could be very serious.
In the Committee report in 1989 (in fact MAFF had had it for quite some time before publication - Ed) they had originally wanted for 100% compensation for the farmers for cattle taken from them with BSE. Government wanted it to be 50% and they signed the document. Walton could not remember anyone in the committee mentioning 50% but they signed it when the Whitehall secretary put the figure in.
Bill Martin, also on the committee was unhappy with this and suggested that 'a Whitehall official' had altered various things. He admitted that they should have taken it out before signing the document.
In fact it was 1 and a half years later when the figure was raised to 100%. Martin said that some farmers were bound to have sent their cattle to market rather than report them to the MAFF on "monetary grounds".
The pet food manufacturers stopped themselves including any bovine offals in the material as they were afraid of an outbreak of the disease in pets.
The Southwood Commttee report permitted all offals from cattle to be eaten by humans. Walton was not happy with this at all and felt that they should not have signed the document. Southwood said that they simply felt that demanding a full offals ban for human diet would be a "no goer" (i.e. that the Government would not have carried it out).
Meldrum (cheif veterinary officer) in 1989 saying that they did not think there was any risk from BSE for humans.
Face the Facts (a BBC radio program) in 1989 included experts saying that they simply did not think we should be eating boving offals and that specific foods would contain them. He said that they should take out all offals from human food. Hugh Fraser from the Neuropathogenesis Unit in Edinburgh (one of the major experts in the field at the time). He said that they were told not to talk to the media. He was obviously annoyed that they had been muzzled and prevented from giving information on what was a very serious disease to the population.
It took a further 18 months before a full offals ban was introduced.
Gordon Hunter and expert in scrapie at the Institute for Animal Health but now retired stated that it was wrong to keep the public uninformed of the dangers that were taking place. Of course we could never prove that BSE caused CJD but that was merely because we could not inject the BSE into humans and see what happened! We did know that BSE was a new disease and that we could not predict if BSE would infect humans or not. This sort of disease did often cross from one species to another so why should BSE not cross to humans?
Soon it turned out that BSE was infecting other species. Antelopes. James Kirkwood from the London Zoo simply explained that we had been feeding them the same as the cattle had been getting.
A mad cat called max...but this time things were different. Scrapie had never infected cats (even when injected into them - Ed). Now 70 cats had died from a diagnosed SE and have caught it presumably from their food.
Pigs then started to die of BSE. (Meldrum had initially denied that they thought there was any danger to pigs).
Professor Almond explained that as the number of species that BSE could infect rose, the more they felt that there was a risk to humans.
Meldrum stated at the time that there was "no risk at all" to humans.
Almond made it clear that they would never have said that
there was no risk from BSE. The Ministry's apparent opinion
simply did not reflect the scientists doubt that BSE was
safe
.
There was a description of the offals ban in 1989 and this was put forward as a 'Belt and braces' prevention of any risk to humans by David McLean, the junior agriculture minister at the time.
Mr. Gummer fed his daughter, Cordelia a beefburger in front of a lot of press people and this was part of a campaign to tell the population that there was simply no risk from BSE.
A TV program, "Natural Lies", which was a drama about BSE infecting humans and how people were prevented from saying anything about it. Meldrum replied to the BBC saying that it was very unwise to put the program on as BSE could not enter human food.
David Statham from the Institute of Environmental Health Officers described how they could not possibly enforce the directives put out by MAFF. In the abattoirs they were using cleavers, saws and sucking to remove brains.
Marja Hovi, a veterinary surgeon that was in charge of making sure that there was no BSE passing through a slaughter house, described how the manufacturing process could not render the product fit for human consumption.
Meat Inspectors (now part of the MAFF) were worried. One of them that had to remain anonymous as he had signed the official secrets act (and hence could not tell anything from his job to the press) and hence might end up in jail just for telling the BBC what he had seen. He simply said that the SBOs were regularly mixed with other offals. He made it clear that the regulations could simply not have been effective.
Graham Statham explained. They were given two directions in which to work. They were told that they did not really need to worry about BSE as there was no risk to humans anyway and hence all of this was just window dressing. On the other hand they had to prevent offals from getting through to the renderers and hence back to the bovine feed.
The EHOs, because of this had sent an 11 page letter to Whitehall telling them that the regulations were not working and that something had to be done. MAFF did not even reply.
In 1995 50% of the slaughterhouses that were visited out of the blue were not carrying out the offals ban properly.
Almond explained that inspectors should have started full implementation of the offals ban in 1988. The BBC wrote to MAFF and asked then why this had not been done. They had had no reply at the time of broadcast.
In 1992 lab tests had appeared showing that BSE was not the same as scrapie (by the inoculation of the diseases into the same strain of mouse and looking at the disase that was produced in the animal). Fraser said that it infected quicker and was different down the microscope. They should not have continued saying that BSE was derived from scrapie.
Gordon Hunter then admitted that they then just had their fingers crossed as to whether BSE would infect humans. They simply could not rely on scrapie being apparently unifective for humans as being an indicator.
Jan 1994 Meldrum was again on the television telling the population that "beef was perfectly safe".
Dave and Dot Churchill realised that their son Stephen had got CJD. Then Francis and Derek (?) Hall realised the same for their son Peter. They realised that the two sons had exactly the same symptoms. Initially they were told that the sons were too young to have CJD.
More reassurances from Stephen Dorrell in 1995 that there was no risk from BSE for humans. He was then asked, in 1996 if that was really true. Dorrell replied approximately that by 'no risk' this could not been 'without any risk' and that there was always a risk of some level.
In early March 1996 10 cases were announced to the Government's advisory committee that were different from others. Professor Almond admtted that there really could be no other plausible explanation at the moment except that the cases were derived from BSE. The Committee demanded that the ministers make the findings public.
On April 23rd 1996 Mr. Major stood up in the House of Commons and announced that British Beef is 'perfectly safe' again. This was presumably because new regulations had been imposed and that this would make sure of the safety.
However, Food Safety Officers looked at various butchers and investigated the cattle being slaughered for remaining offals. They found, in 5 shops, 7 samples of SBO (these were fully identified using histology and so there could be no argument) that were about to go into the mincer and be sold for human consumption.
Almond then made it clear that we were all now on tenterhooks. We all hope that there will be no explosion of cases of CJD but admit that the numbers could be substantial.
Going back to Ashford it has become clear that there is a local cluster of cases of CJD in the area. They have had 4 cases in the last year. In fact they should have one case every 4 years and the local Consultant in Communcable Disease Control made this plain.
Professor Almond made it clear that there were worst case scenarios.
As a whole the program made specifically plain how the UK Government had manipulated the information it was receiving from its committee, not taking notice of the recommendations from various sources, not overseeing the carrying out of the regulations that they imposed, and then telling the population that there was no risk when they simply did not have data with which to justify this. It also made it clear that people were afraid to speak out, and had been prevented from telling the press (or even other members of their profession) of the disease and the risks that it represented.
Full marks must go to Hugh Fraser in this for his excellent admission that they had been prevented from speaking.
Dont forget the Horizon programs on 17.11.96 and 18.11.96 as scientific updates. These make it plain how little research was carried out to deal with the BSE question and how many of the people involved had convinced themselves that BSE simply was a minor risk to humans.
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