I: MPs with Vested Interests in the Cattle Industry.

Many tory members of parliament are pharmers or have financial interests in the pharming industry. The labour party supports pharm workers and is thus just as concerned to protect the pharm industry as the tory party. The liberal democrats represent primarily rural constituencies. In one way or another the three major political parties are closely tied to the current pharming system and wish to see it restored as soon as possible.

A huge number of tory mps have a vested interest in the Animal exploitation industry.

Director on associated british foods.

Chair of the house of commons’ agriculture committee. Has a pharm in gloucestershire.

Pharmer and butcher.

Owns a 149 acre pharm in norfolk.

David harris owns a pharm in cornwall. He is a director of woodgate farms dairy.

Has pharm near andover, "gets £10,000 a year from the sale of 100 Holstein calves (for the veal trade)."

"Lord Parkinson of Carnforth, the former Tory MP and Transport and Energy secretary, is to take over from Derek Sawyer as chairman of Usborne, the stock market listed agricultural supplies and motor products group on Januaru 1st."

"Hillsdown, funded by Sir Harry Solomon .. owns Hartley's Jam, Typhoo Tea, Buxted chickens and Daylay eggs .. is Britain's biggest slaughterer. A conservative MP, Barry Legg, was a director and company secretary .. chaired by Sir John Nott."

"Agriculture Minister William Waldegrave’s beef herd has been hit by mad cow disease." "Agriculture Minister William Waldegrave admitted yesterday that calves from his farm were exported for the barbaric veal trade .." .. "the family farm of William Waldegrave, the Minister of Agriculture, in Somerset, where veal calves are reared before export to the continent. Mr Waldegrave's wife, Caroline, director of the Pru Leith School of Cookery in London, provoked the fury of protestors when she wrote about the merits of Dutch veal, which involves the use of crates to restrict the young animals' movement."

"The Minister of agriculture, John Gummer, is to be reprimanded by MPs over his failure to disclose more than £2,000 of work done at his Suffolk home by Britain's biggest meat company, Hillsdown Holdings."

"The agriculture minister who ditched planned restrictions on animal feed is now on the board of one of Britain’s biggest producers of feed. Lord Peter Walker was in charge when the industry was de-regulated in 1989, allowing material from dead animals into livestock feed."

Although few labour mps are pharmers or have direct financial interests in the Animal exploitation industry, the party is a strong supporter of the pharm industry because of the jobs it creates. The general rule of brutish politics is that what the tories do for profits, the labour party does for jobs.

Liberal democrat mps represent rural areas and are thus very strong supporters of the beef industry.

It has been suggested that, "MAFF protects the farmers, food processors, large retailers and various related bodies such as pharmaceutical companies."

These are so massive it would require a great deal of work to list them all. Pharmers are the biggest welfare spongers in the country.

"Government subsidies connive in manipulating our diet - to eat fat. For example, an 80% subsidy is given to caterers of school meals and hospitals if they use full fat dairy products in their cooking, but is not given if the caterers use skimmed milk and low fat products."

There are virtually no scientists left in the field of Animal husbandry who are not dependent on the Cattle industry for funds, grants, wages, careers, social status, perks or pensions. Even those scientists with only a minimal dependence on the Cattle industry know that if they publish findings which would cause economic losses to the Cattle industry then the pharm lobby will exert its influence to ensure they lose their grants, jobs and perhaps even their careers. Multi-national Cattle corporations employ Scientists to maximize the exploitation of Animals and to provide a scientific justification for anything the Cattle industry wishes to do.

The government, tory pharmers, pharmers’ lobby and the pharmaceutical industry, have used their financial influence over scientists to prevent, or at the very least deter, them from speaking out against the government’s rantings that there is no evidence that bse poses a threat to human health, "Scientists at the country's leading centre for nutrition research (the dunn nutrition unit in cambridge) have been told they must not criticize food products without permission from the director for fear of losing their financial support from the food industry." When david clarke was labour's agriculture spokesman he claimed that government scientists had been told they would be sacked if they talked publically about bse. One of the remarkable features of the bse-cjd crisis is that politicians have been able to get away with continually making psuedo-scientific statements, e.g. that there is no evidence that bse poses a threat to human health, without the slightest risk of being contradicted by any scientist or group of scientists.

The tory government has refused to co-opt onto its so-called ‘independent’ committees any scientist who has criticized government policies, "Neither he, (richard lacey), nor Professor Bernard Tomlinson, who famously said he would not eat beef last December, nor Dr Harash Narang nor Dr Stephen Dealler nor Dr Robert Perry were thought suitable to sit on the government’s committee of scientists advising on BSE."

Even when scientists claim to have solved some of the mysteries surrounding bse they are sacked, "A leading scientist who says he has solved the mystery of 'mad cow' disease has been ordered to stop all work which would verify his claims. Harash Narang believes he has uncovered the 'genetic fingerprint' of the disease, even though he was excluded from government funding and had to raise research money from private businessmen."; 'Mad cow' doctor to face disciplinary hearing." He was a "clinical virologist at the Public Health service (but) lost his job in 1994."

"Official Veterinary Surgeon in Bristol, found that slaughtered animals for export were going through on the nod and refused to sign certificates saying they were BSE-free. The council threatened to withdraw her contract and her vet practice fired her."

In line with its policy of privatizing research and monitoring centres, the tories have reduce the state veterinary service, "The government had allowed the number of veterinary inspectors to fall by nearly a quarter."; "Several veterinary inspection centres which diagnoze "mad cow" and other livestock diseases in England and Wales are to be closed, John Gummer the Agriculture Minister said yesterday."; "Ministers are getting rid of vets and scientists in the front line of the battle against BSE-type diseases. Five state Veterinary Service Offices are being closed and a number of senior divisional vetinary officers made redundant. The offices control vets who get called out to deal with a disease outbreak. And 61 staff are to go at the institute for animal health which carries out crucial research into BSE."

"The government announced a £30 million cut last year on food research spending claiming that the food industry should pick up the bill. The Institute for Food Research which used to get funds from the Agricultural and Food Research council, at its unit at Bristol which has pioneered research into salmonella, meat hygiene and micro wave ovens will be forced to close next month."

The tories can always rely on its list of the ‘great and the good’ to find a highly honoured nonentity to sit on a government sponsored committee to produce a report which excuses all criminal activities by big business and deflects blame from the government. The government is also able to call up establishment scientists if one of its committees needs politically-correct scientific advice.

The government set up a committee chaired by richard southwood to look at the threat posed by bse. Just how politically correct this committee was could be seen from its ludicrous conclusion that .. "cattle were a "dead-end" host .. the disease would not spread to other hosts."

After the government had squandered what little scientific credibility the southwood committee had, it needed a new set of junk scientists to provide it with a scientific justification for doing as little as possible to stop the spread of bse - thereby allowing the disease to spread even further.

The government set up seac as a permanent advisory group on bse in 1990. The government packed the committee with politically correct scientists who would toe the government’s line. Since december 14th 1995, presumably when the government was told unofficially about the growing numbers of bse-cjd cases, five new members have been appointed. One of the new members is a public health expert - the first to have been appointed since the committee was set up - supposedly with the intention of protecting public health.

The government set up the cjd surveillance unit in 1990. The unit discovered its first bse-cjd case in 1995. Harash narang stated in 1990, when he appeared before a select committee of mps at the house of commons, that he’d seen cases of bse-cjd. The main job of the cjd surveillance unit over the last five years has been to find ways of ignoring these scientific findings, "Some microbiologists were this week claiming that complacency also led the cjd monitoring unit to ignore evidence that people were dying from unusual strains of cjd as long as five years ago."

"The Guardian disclosed on Saturday that the ministry of Agriculture suppressed a report by its veterinary inspectors showing nerly half the abattoirs in Britain fail minimum hygiene standards."

Even though the tyrrell committee had been set up to provide a scientific justification for the government’s do-nothing policies, the tide of evidence was turning against the canute-like government so strongly that even tyrrell was forced to produce recommendations which the government regarded as too extreme, "The Tyrrell committee reported in June 1989 with the advice bovine tissues such as brain, spleen and thymus should not be used for human consumption. This report was suppressed for six months during which time these organs were still being consumed by the human population."

"The government is refusing to give details of the exact ages of cattle diagnozed with Bse between June and September this year."

There are many examples of the government’s refusal to take action against the spread of bse.

Despite the increasing number of deaths on an increasing number of pharms around the country in what was transparently a growing epidemic, the government took 18 months to make bse a notifiable disease.

"Scientists linked BSE to feed containing scrapie, but it was two years before the MAFF appointed Southwood to advise on its implications."

After being told about the dangers of the meat rendering process john macgregor, secretary of state for agriculture, refused to do anything about the suspected feedstuff for seven months, "In July 1988 the government bans from cattle feed the scrapie infected sheep offals."

"The ministry (maff) confirmed that no tests were done on suspect feed to confirm it contained the disease." When a vet wrote to the ‘veterinary record’ to point out that the scrapie theory of bse had not been verified through experiments, john wilesmith of the central veterinary laboratory, who heads maff’s epidemiology team, dismissed the suggestion, "It would only confirm what epidemiological study has already shown."

There is no .. "Maff-funded research programme aimed at developing a test to determine the presence of the BSE pathogen both in live animals and carcass meat."

The government has refused to fund research into the number of bse-infected Cattle being processed in the country’s slaughterhouses. It would be easy to take a random sampling of brain tissue from the Cattle slaughtered at abattoirs to determine the prevalance of bse amongst brutish Cattle.

"By 1988, working for the Public Health Laboratory Service in Newcastle, Narang had established that the infectious agent was a virus with a single strand of DNA. If there was DNA, the virus must be present throughout the body. With the appearance of BSE, Narang began work on a same day test to detect it in the urine of cows - a tremendous break-through, since MAFF’s test can only be done on slaughtered animals. There was another implication. If the virus was in the blood, it was also in the meat - in best quality steak and not just the offal. But MAFF scientists decided that no DNA was involved. Narang applied for funding to research his test from MAFF. All seemed fine until he suggested that he would collect bovine heads from the local abattoir rather than wait for MAFF to send him samples of BSE brains. Narang believes that MAFF officials saw an abyss open at their feet. If Narang conducted random tests at abattoirs, the true proportion of cattle infected with BSE - and heading for the butcher’s shops - would become clear. Perhaps MAFF wanted to hide it - perhaps they were simply afraid that sensitive information would slip out of their control. Either way, there was no grant. The scientist began to become very unpopular with the mandarins. With sponsorship from a Newcastle businessman, Ken Bell, Narang perfected his test. But the Newcastle lab that employed him first restricted his after-hours work, then instructed him to work on anything except bse and finally made him redundant two years ago. Maff’s scientists cross-checked Narang’s results on a batch of 10 heads in 1991, concluded he was 80% correct but turned him away. Dr Narang says: "It’s not that the test doesn’t work or costs too much money, it’s simply the cost of the animals they would have to kill. They were turning a blind eye to it. They said things weren’t going wrong with the way they were dealing with the situaton.""

It was pointed out above that narang’s test for the presence of bse has been tried by maff scientists and found to work in 80% of cases. This shows that they know there is a very strong probability that bse can be found in urine. If bse is in urine then it will be in all other parts of a Cow.

In the early 1990s, as bse continued to spread around brutish herds, the government was in an ideological dilemma over compensation to pharmers for the slaughter of bse-infected cows. As a government committed to the free market it didn’t want to compensate pharmers. But, as so many tory mps were pharmers it was difficult to prevent them from forcing the government to pay compensation. The compromise was half compensation.

The government was told that half compensation was not enough of an incentive to pharmers to stop selling infected meat. The statistics show that pharmers continued to sell bse-infected Cattle (to pensioners and small babies) until they received full compensation in february 1990. It seems clear that the government’s refusal to pay the full cost of each Animal slaughtered helped to spread the disease. The government not merely had a penny pinching attitude towards public health, it also had a very short-term attitude since the costs of coping with the disease that has spread around the country, will be far greater than they were originally.

The government’s chief vet, ray bradley of the central veterinary laboratory, said that experiments into bse’s transmissability from Cows to Calves had still not been completed. Ten years after the first case of bse, and five years after the first case of a Calf getting the disease without eating infected meat, the government has still not been able to determine the disease’s transmissability. The reason for this is transparent. The longer it can delay discovering that bse is transmissable, the longer it can go on pretending that there is no scientific evidence about bse’s transmissability.

Over the past ten years the government has presented a series of hypotheses about bse all of which have turned out to be wrong. The hypotheses have not been put forward as part of a scientific attempt to discover the nature of this disease and counteract its spread but as a political device to protect pharmers’ interests and deceive the public into believing there is no threat from the disease. The government has deliberately and systematically misled the public about bse from the start. The tory government is full of inveterate liars.

The government once argued that bse could not spread to other Animals. Subsequent events have shown this to be nonsense.

For many years a variety of government ministers maintained that Pigs could not contract bse. John webb, a spokesperson for the ministry of agriculture, stated, "There has never been a case (of bse) in pigs, and scientists have even failed to induce the disease in the animals in laboratory tests." Despite the fact that bse had spread to other species the government stated that, "a ban on feed stuffs to pigs is unnecessary." Pharmers were thus allowed to continue feeding their Pigs with scrapie-bse-infected offal.

John webb’s statement turned out to be premature because it was later discovered that Pigs could contract the disease experimentally. The government then announced that infected feed would no longer be given to Pigs, "The use of specified cattle offal and tissues in all animal and pet food stuffs was banned by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food last night after it was revealed that a pig had been infected with mad cow disease." Whilst it seems to be true that Pigs cannot contract bse naturally, it is possible they could carry the disease and even pass it on to other species.

John gummer argued that Pets were not at risk from bse infected feed. In may 1990 it was announced that a siamese Cat had died from the disease, the first known Cat victim of the disease. But gummer may be only half wrong. Although a couple of hundred Cats have contracted the disease Dogs have not been affected.

In july 1989 the government claimed that bse could not spread to the offspring of infected Cows. John gummer reiterated the argument. Unfortunately it was not true. When the first case of such a transfer occurred, "David Maclean, the junior agriculture minister, told the Commons that the case had "no significance to public health'." The fact that the disease could be transferred, presumably by blood, was not significant to this idiotic, psuedo-scientific, toe-rag.

Because the government believed that Cows couldn’t pass on bse to their offspring it refused to ban the export of Calves and continued to allow human consumption of Calf brains, "The brains and other suspected organs of beef calves under six months old remain on sale despite demands that the government should ban their use. The ministry spokesman said that calf brains and offal would remain on sale for human and animal consumption." When it was discovered that the disease could be passed on, the government was forced to ban the sale Calf brains.

The government claimed the disease would not spread to other species - it did.

"Mr Gummer's testimony two weeks ago to the Commons agricultural select committee when he said the infective agent which causes BSE had been found only in the brains of affected animals."

Over the last five years the tory government has claimed that brutish beef is completely safe to eat. This was, of course, another lie from the tory lie factory. Without a test for bse, it is scientifically impossible to prove that beef is safe.

"British beef is entirely safe."

Over the last five years the tory government has stated that it has followed scientific evidence in proposing that brutish beef is completely safe to eat. This is yet another tory lie. Scientific warnings about the danger posed by bse had been issued since 1988 from highly respected sources, "Alarm bells abut this problem started ringing in the British Medical Journal and the Lancet back in 1988 yet control procedures to protect public health did not appear until November 1989." Even the chair of a government sponsored committee concluded that, "If you want to be absolutely safe you should not eat beef or eat foods containing beef products." The tories have deliberately lied to the public that scientists believe that brutish beef is safe - not all scientists believe this is the case.

"British beef can be safely eaten by everyone both adults and children."

"I should make it clear that humans do not get "mad cow disease."

Paul brown, medical director of the united states’ public health service, the doctor in charge of america’s public health, apologizes for dismissing the risk to humans.

The statement ‘there is no proof that humans can get bse’ is a slightly less definitive view than the one above that humans cannot get bse.

"There is no scientific proof that bse can be caught by eating beef." (Nov 1989).

"There is no scientific evidence that BSE can be transmitted to humans."

"There is no scientific evidence that cjd in humans arises from eating infected beef."

These statements are true but utterly misleading since no research could be done to discover the truth. The only way it could be proved that humans could get bse from Cattle would be by injecting people with the disease. Whilst such tests have been inflicted on a wide range of Animals it has not been done for oomans. Therefore the government has been able to make totally unscientific statements because they have been protected by the moral prohibition against experimentation on humans. The tory government is so protective of the Cattle industry the only evidence it would accept about the threat posed by bse was the presence of dead bodies - when it is too late. It would rather allow people to die than take precautionary actions to prevent such deaths.

The government’s attitude towards Animal experiments is that they are a good way of discovering the effect on ooman health of a new substance whether this might be a new drug/chemical/cosmetic, etc. If a new substance is shown to have an adverse effect on Animals then it is believed it will be unsafe for humans - and the reverse is also believed to be true. Unfortunately, as been shown by hans reusch, Animal experiments are not in the slightest bit helpful for understanding how a new substance will affect human health because each Animals’ chemistry/metabolism/physiology is different. The advantage of chemical/pharmaceutical companies’ carrying out Animal experiments is that Animal experiments enable companies to put new substances on the market which they claim are safe for humans because they are safe for Animals. When it is later discovered that a new substance causes ooman fatalities the chemical/pharmaceutical companies deny all legal responsibility by quoting their experiments on Animals. Animal experiments are just a legal escape clause for multi-national pharmaceutical corporations. As reusch has argued, Animal experiments help to kill people not to protect their health.

The government is guilty of just this sort of scientific nonsense as regards the bse-cjd crisis. It has suggested because of the results of Animal experiments that humans are not in danger from bse, "Kevin Taylor, the government’s assistant chief veterinarian said meat from BSE infected cows had been injected into the brains of mice but the tests completed last month showed no signs that mice had caught the disease, "We therefore remain confident that beef is perfectly safe to eat." he said." Bse is yet another example of the fact that Animal experiments cost human lives.

Neither the government nor multi-national pharmeutical corporations are zealous adherents to the results obtained from Animal experiments. On the contrary, they support Animal experiments when they give the required results but dismiss them when they don’t. This expediency has revealed itself in the bse-cjd crisis.

It is not known what Animal experiments the government has sanctioned to determine the threat posed by bse. It was pointed out above that experiments have been done on Cats, Pigs and Mice. The experiments show that all three Animals contract the disease if bse is injected directly into the brain. The government was not pleased about these results and immediately began to deny they had any implications for human health. Once it had been shown that Pigs could contract the disease the response from the government’s scientists was not that the experiments showed that bse posed a great threat to human health but that they were meaningless, "The British Veterinary Association stated the experiments had no implications for the pig industry, food safety, and public health."

The same reaction occurred as a result of the Mice experiments. When the first experiments seemed to show that Mice were not affected by bse, quacks like kevin taylor, the government’s assistant chief veterinarian, said that beef is perfectly safe to eat - see the quote above. When later experiments showed that Mice could contract the disease the result was dismissed and the claim continued to be made that brutish beef was safe to eat. One of the most ludicrous arguments put forward to save the beef industry was that since Mice contract bse only when they are injected with huge quantities of the disease this proved that humans are safe because, taking the relative body weights into consideration, humans would have to consume a vast quantity of bse before they got the disease - an argument which completely overlooks the tens of thousands of Cows keeling over all around the country. The person who put forward this argument didn’t seem able to understand that despite their huge difference in size, Cows need less scrapie-infected material to contract the disease than Mice. The bse-cjd crisis proves yet again that Animal experiments are a scientific fraud used by scientific frauds to protect the interests of their multi-national corporation paymasters.

One of the most recent smokescreens the government has thrown up after the news of the bse-cjd deaths was that, "There is no scientific evidence that children are more at risk from eating beef than adults." (the prime minister 21.3 1996). A few days later the government line was trotted out by the seac committee. Once again, this type of statement is nothing less than scientific fraud.

After the bse-cjd deaths were announced the government promoted the line that there is currently no risk of contracting bse because the disease could only have been spread before 1989 when the government implemented a specified offal ban (sob) and all bse-infected material was removed from abattoirs, "Pending further research, the most likely explanation is that these cases may be linked to exposure to bse before the offal ban in 1989." This is yet another example of junk science.

There are a number of reasons why humans could still contract the disease after 1989:-

* As has been noted above, the government’s measures in 1989 to prevent humans getting the disease were deficient in a large number of ways e.g. the ban applied only to a small number of infected organs in Cattle over 6 months old. If the prion dna exists all over the body then consuming any part of a Cow could have helped to pass on the disease. Even those of us with not the slightest knowldege of Cattle physiology have only to apply a little common sense to realize that the government’s message, ‘Meat is safe, offals are not’ is nonsense and can only relate to an Animal which exists solely in the fantasies of tory pharmers. If the prion dna first enters a Cow’s stomach it then has to get to the brain, the liver, the kidneys, the spinal cord, etc. According to the government’s hypothesis, this happens without the prion dna moving through any part of the Animal. Common sense dictates, however, that the prion dna gets from the stomach into the other organs via the bloodstream and if it gets into the bloodstream then it will get into every part of the Animal. Perhaps the reason it takes 3-5 years to incubate in Cows is not because it has a long fuse but because it takes a long time to find its way to the brain, as opposed to all the other parts of the Animal, "Very little is known about how, in cases of bse, the prion particle moves from the digestive system to the brain. One suggestion is that it travels across the gut, via the lymphatic system, to the spleen, and then via the nerves inervating the spleen to the spinal cord and brain."

* Calves could have harboured the prion dna and then transmitted it to consumers to incubate. There is no evidence that the infective agent could not have been harboured and transmitted by Calves.

* Bse infected cows were still being put on the market and then sold for slaughter long after 1989. The precautions to stop this from happening were limited, "An illicit trade in bogus health certificates for cattle threatens to undermine government attempts to control bse. A year long operation by maff officials has revealed that thousands of calves sold with a clean bill of health may have come from infected herds."

* The slaughtering process was supposed to stop the spread of the disease but it was carried out in such a slipshod fashion that much of the infected material from the banned organs could have got into the foodchain.

"Keith meldrum, the government’s chief vet, stated, "I can say to you that so far in 1996 there have been only 4 occasions when we have found small pieces of spinal cord in the carcass (about to enter the food chain)." This seems somewhat reassuring but he was later forced to point out that the contaminated meat was found during inspections during only one month - january. It is not known how many inspections were carried out.

The government has stated that older Cattle are more susceptible to bse than Calves and yet, almost in the same breath, government ministers then turn around and state that children are not more susceptible to bse than adults.

The government has sought to defend itself over the bse-cjd crisis by arguing that it has consistently followed independent scientific advice about bse. As should be obvious from the section above this is patently untrue. It has:-

* deliberately silenced public scientific debate about the disease;

* sidelined those whose views it does not like;

* sacked scientists investigating the disease, even those claiming to have a means for testing for the presence of the disease;

* closed down veterinary centres for monitoring the spread of the disease;

* refused to fund scientific experiments to discover the nature, infectiousness and transmissability, of the disease.

The government claims that it has been forced to admit to the possibility that humans could get bse because scientists have only recently discovered a new more lethal strain of cjd. This is not true, "The government was told six years ago that a new superstrain of CJD had been found in humans." It was discovered allegedly by harash narang.

The government believes bse is not an infectious disease. Bse can be caught only by eating infected meat and not through any other means. However, some scientists believe it can be caught through breathing and can be transmitted during pregnancy from mother to offspring.

The government has done more to suppress scientific investigation into bse than it has to prevent what could be an epidemic.

Throughout the bse-cjd crisis many pharmers have deliberately evaded their public health responsibilities by putting bse-infected Animals on the market. There have been a number of ways in which they have evaded the government’s feeble regulations to control the disease.

Although the manufacture of feedstuff with bse-infected Cattle offals was banned in november 1989 large quantities of the feed had already been delivered to pharmers around the country. Rather than lose money by disposing of this infected feed, many pharmers fed it to their Animals and thus helped to spread the disease and increase the possible number of fatalities. Some commentators believe this feed was still being used for up to a year after it was banned, "Britain's BSE epidemic will take up to a year longer to die out than predicted because farmers continued to give their cows feed from the rendered down remains of sheep after it was banned."; "Farmers carried on using contaminated feed for many months, and evaded bans on selling diseased animals."

In august 1988 the government made compulsory the slaughter of bse-infected Cattle and offered 50% compensation to pharmers for the loss of their livestock. The government was told its compensation scheme would not work and that pharmers would go on selling diseased meat to the public. The statistics show that pharmers continued to sell bse-infected Cattle until they received full compensation in february 1990, "The Earl of Lindsay, a Scottish Office minister, admitted last week that this cash-saving policy (half compensation for slaughtered cows) encouraged farmers to pass off sick animals as healthy, and prolonged the period during which humans were fed potentially lethal beef" A large number of bse cases have been found in Cattle born after the ban in 1989.

Even after learning this lesson the government decided to cut the compensation a few years later, "The Minister of Agriculture cuts compensation in January 1994. Farmers who hand over cows with BSE for incineration now get only the value of an older cow, a loss of about £200 on the approximate £900 for a healthy animal." It is more than likely that this provided an incentive to a large number of pharmers to evade government restrictions and thus avoid a financial loss. It may be that one of the reasons that the bse epidemic appears to decline rapidly after 1992 is because pharmers were refusing to register bse-infected Cows.

In the early years of the bse-cjd crisis, some pharmers who couldn’t afford to pay for the slaughter and disposal of bse infected Cattle (or refused to do so) just dumped or buried carcasses wherever they could, "The hills are alive, or rather dead, with thousands of deceased sheep and cows." There is a distinct possibility that this could spread bse to Wildlife.

In march 1991 it was estimated that, "Nearly half of the 1.5 million dead animals normally collected by knackermen are being buried on farms or being dumped."

Pharmers with bse victims have evaded restrictions on the selling of Calves from infected herds, "An illicit trade in bogus health certificates for cattle threatens to undermine government attempts to control bse. A year long operation by maff officials has revealed that thousands of calves sold with a clean bill of health may have come from infected herds." The scam involves retagging english Cattle as coming from bse-free ireland, "One well-known scam was for calves from the virtually BSE-free irish Republic, en route through England to France, to have British calves added along the journey, as the lorries stopped to rest and water their cargo."

Pharmers’ disregard for public health could be seen at its most blatant when bse-infected Cattle were publically auctioned in front of crowds of pharmers, "‘World in Action’ went to two cattle markets in Britain and found that cows with BSE were being put on the market. (The infected Cattle) are not spotted by the market inspector." ‘World in Action’ found 3 Cattle at these markets which were obviously infected with bse. No attempt was made to disguise their state and the programme-makers decided to buy the Animals to prevent them from being sold to abattoirs and thus getting into the food-chain.

Given the potential financial losses which pharmers could suffer for having a bse case on their pharm, a market developed in which bse-infected Cattle could be sold to a "cull cow dealer". The dealer made a profit from collecting the compensation fee whilst the pharmers were able to pretend they had a bse-free herd .. "the pactice of selling cows with bse on to "cull cow dealers" who then claim the compensation for the cow. This allows the farmer to maintain bse-free status."

Finally, northern irish pharmers have been evading brutish restrictions on Cattle by smuggling the Animals into eire where they are given new identity tags and sold as bse-free irish meat.

The brutish Cattle industry proclaims that its abattoirs are the cleanest and most hygienic in the world and that all government health regulations are followed meticulously. The reality, of course, is quite different, "The Guardian first disclosed in March 1989 that only one British abattoir in 10 held an EC hygiene export certificate." Very little has changed since then. In late 1995 the government launched a covert operation to try and discover how well the government’s bse regulations were being upheld. The result was far from satisfactory, "Further shortcomings have been exposed in the enforcement of regulations in abattoirs. Just before xmas, Hogg admitted that inspectors had found failings in the handling of cattle offals in nearly half of all slaughterhouses visited unannounced."; "The Guardian disclosed on Saturday that the ministry of Agriculture suppressed a report by its veterinary inspectors showing nearly half the abattoirs in Britain fail minimum hygiene standards." It should not be forgotten that the brutish government based a large part of its hypothesis that people are unlikely to get bse after 1989 on the belief that all bse-infected material has been scrupulously removed by conscientious slaughterhousepeople. One of the main reasons that slaughterhousepeople have been so sloppy about their job is because they have continually heard the government stating that brutish beef is safe and that there is no health risk involved. When the government dismisses the seriousness of a disease then those supposed to be helping to protect public health are much less conscientious about their work.

But even if Cattle were processed as efficiently as the regulations require, the very nature of the cutting machinery and water cleaning used in the dissection process would spread infected material onto meat which would eventually end up on people’s dinner plates. For example, "In appeasing the meat lobby, ministers even agreed that brains could be removed from cattle by splitting open the skulls. This enabled the industry to recover meat mechanically from the cheeks. Helen Grant pointed out as early as 1990 that this frequently resulted in bits of brain being splattered on to meat destined for human consumption. Similar fears were raised over the cutting of the spinal column into two to remove the spinal cord. Vertebrae are still being deployed in the manufacture of gelatine, which is used in foods .."

The veterinarian profession exists to protect the interests of pharmers not the Animals they are supposed to be caring for.

"Official Veterinary Surgeon in Bristol, found that slaughtered animals for export were going through on the nod and refused to sign certificates saying they were BSE-free. The council threatened to withdraw her contract and her vet practice fired her."

For many years vets supported the government line that Pigs could not contract the disease. After it was shown that Pigs could contract bse, "The British Veterinary Association stated the experiments had no implications for the pig industry, food safety, and public health."

Ministry of agriculture vets do not believe there is transmissability (between Cows and Calves).

"Thousands of live calves and millions of sheep have been exported illegally each year without disinfection procedures and veterinary checks which the European Union believed were being carried out."

Brutish vets are opposed to the culling of Cattle, "My immediate reaction to it (the luxembourg decision to cull Cows) is that there is no scientific reason for it. It is purely for the grounds of public confidence in meat." These are the same people who are responsible for culling thousands of Badgers on the flimsy pretext that these Animals are giving diseases to Cattle. Vets’ opposition to culling is simply a means of protecting the interests of the beef industry rather than public health.

The european dimension to the bse-cjd crisis in brutland has been highlighted above. In the first instance the european community seemed like the heroes in the crisis for preventing the brutish government from persisting with its ‘do-nothing’ policy which would have helped to spread the disease in brutland and around the world. European governments will find it extremely difficult lifting the world-wide ban on brutish beef ban because european consumers are implacably opposed to brutish beef. Consumers reacted angrily to the news that the brutish government banned the use of scrapie-bse-infected feed to domestic pharmers but allowed it to be exported to europe. They have realized that some of their herds are now infected with bse and are boycotting beef causing considerable hardship to european pharmers. Whilst brutish consumers are gradually beginning to accept the beef industry’s argument that the risk of eating beef isn’t that much different from being run-over by a car, european consumers look upon the issue entirely differently. They don’t see why they should take even the slightest risk by eating brutish beef when there are lots of home-based beef supplies that do not carry any risk.

Having started off as heroes the european community has ended up becoming the villains by insisting on the slaughter of huge numbers of Cattle.

The european community is still a hero to the extent that it will monitor developments in brutland. The brutish government would like to cover up the bse-cjd crisis as much as possible but it will have a great deal of difficulty doing this with the european community. The european community will be watching developments in brutland with considerable interest because they do not want to face epidemics amongst their own herds of bipeds or quadrupeds.

A number of individuals and organizations have already started to promote anti-bse propaganda.

"Let’s remember the massive scares over salmonella in eggs and listeria in yoghurt. Neither turned out to be serious long-term threats to our health."

"British beef is best. It’s perfectly safe."

"My freezer is rather bulging with meat (beef) that i’ve purchased myself."

"I wouldn’t hesitate to eat beef in England. I see no medical reason not to."