Terra Firm no.25: Spectacularism, Zionism, Greens, Wildlife, and Bse.

The first Animal suspected of having bse was spotted in december 1984.[1] As further cases appeared the disease baffled everyone in the scientific, and pharming, communities. Given the ministry of agriculture, food and fisheries’ (hereinafter called the maffia) total committment to the protection of the pharming industry, its first response to the disease was to protect pharmers' interests by denying its similarities with scrapie. The maffia feared such an analogy would scare public opinion about the threat posed by bse-infected beef (hereinafter referred to as bseef). After all, the maffia knew instinctively that this disease posed no threat and would disappear like many of the other mysterious diseases which occasionally afflicted Cattle and other slave Animals. However, contrary to the maffia's wishful thinking, the disease continued to spread. Eventually, the maffia realized the disease was not going to disappear and reversed its tactics, arguing that bse was, after all, similar to scrapie. The maffia realized this analogy was no longer a liability but provided a major political advantage in that it implied that bse would not pose a threat to ooman health given that, for the last couple of centuries, brutish people had lived “safely” with scrapie-infested Sheep. By safely, the maffia meant that no scientist had been foolish enough to establish a link between scrapie and the peculiar number of brain rotting diseases which, every year, inexplicably affect a small number of people in the country. This analogy enabled brutish politicians such as john gummer to state, in may 1990, with complete scientific certainty that, “British beef is entirely safe.”[2] even though there was not the slightest evidence to support this contention. Why was there a need for evidence when there was a convenient analogy which explained everything? This analogy was still the only 'evidence' being used by pharmer loving politicians in october 1995 when john major argued, “I should make it clear that humans do not get “mad cow disease.”[3] In december 1995, a couple of months before the announcement of the first ten ooman victims of bse, the prime minister repeated, “There is currently no scientific evidence that BSE can be transmitted to humans or that eating beef causes CJD.”[4] Here were clear cut examples of analogous thinking overriding empirical realities and, in the process, helping to spread a lethal disease amongst the brutish people. That bse became an epidemic was due primarily to political denialism. Political denialism is the sine qua non for the spread of any disease. It is easy for diseases to flourish where everyone pretends it doesn’t exist or is not harmful.

Two and a half years after the disease first appeared, brutland’s pharmer-loving scientists officially diagnozed the disease as bse and confirmed its similarity to scrapie and kuru.[5] A few years later an american scientist revealed these diseases were caused by a disease producing agent never recognized before i.e. prion proteins. Brutish scientists hadn’t the slightest interest, let alone government funding, to make such a discovery for fear they might be made social outcasts in a society dominated by the aristocratic, landowning, pharming elite which had never bothered over the previous couple of centuries to rid their flocks of scrapie. The non-brutish scientific world classified bse, scrapie, and kuru, as members of what were called transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (tses). In other words, they were scientifically recognized as transmissible diseases which could be passed easily, via a number of routes including blood, from one species to another..[6] The generic name of the diseases indicated their nature. So although little was known about bse, far more was known about the large family of tses. This wider knowledge of tses made it possible to determine bse’s overall characteristics.

In 1988, as bse spread and the maffia’s hopes that it would go away began to fade, the brutish government was forced to implement policies to combat what was increasingly looking like an epidemic. Four years after the appearance of the disease, the tory government banned the use of meat and bone meal for Cattle and Sheep. It did not, however, ban the manufacture of meat and bone meal. The last thing the pharmer dominated tory government wanted was to implement measures reducing the pharming industry’s profits - or, to be more accurate, which would reduce the vast subsidies that the landowning pharming elite in parliament was quietly handing over to themselves as representatives of a grossly unprofitable industry. No action was taken to prevent the spread of bse to oomans. As far as the tories were concerned there was no point in taking action against bse when there was no evidence that oomans were vulnerable to the disease. The fact that there was no evidence that oomans were not vulnerable did not worry them in the slightest.[7]

As the numbers of bse-infected Cattle continued to rise, increasing demands were made on the government to protect public health in case oomans could contract the disease. The government evaded any action by setting up a second committee to look into the threat. But even after the tyrell committee completed its report, the government did nothing about it. It was only in january 1990, six months later, when bse spread to other species, that public outrage forced the government into resurrecting the report.[8] Another six months had been lost as a result of pharmers' self-destructive, vested interests.

In order to be seen to be doing something to protect ooman health, the government implemented what it called the specified offals ban (the government used the acronym sbo but sob will be used here). It argued that bse was present only in specific Cattle organs so by banning these organs from public consumption it could safely allow people to continue eating the rest of the corpse. The government banned the consumption of brains, the lymphatic system (spleen, thymus, tonsils), spinal cord and intestines. However, it continued to permit the consumption of .. “liver, kidneys, lungs, nerves, lymph nodes, bone marrow, eyeballs and so on ...”[9]; .. "everything from the eyeballs, which might be found in sausages (and contain good protein), to the long bones, which contained gelatine for sweets and factory-made foods. (Also used would be) the lungs, the nerves and the lymph nodes .."[10]

The government’s sob stopped the public from consuming only the cheapest Cattle organs. The policy had been designed primarily to minimize the financial losses to the Animal exploitation industry rather than to protect public health.[11] This was doubtlessly a sheer coincidence which should not in any way reflect badly on the corrupt nature of tory politicians nor of the so-called scientists working for the maffia.[12] Richard lacey stated, “This action (the sbo ban) was more of a cosmetic attempt at reassurance than a genuine attempt to protect the public.”[13] The government was also reluctant to ban the sale of Cattle bones because deboning Cattle would have been an expensive process.

The justification for banning specific offals was derived, once again, from the scrapie analogy. Unlike most other scientists around the world, brutish scientists fantasized that scrapie existed only in a limited number of Sheep organs .. “the most infectious parts of the sheep are the brain, placenta, spleen, liver and lymph nodes.”[14] The fact that this was traditional, pharming, hearsay not scientifically verifiable evidence was once again irrelevant to the tory government who found it suited their vested pharming interests. What also added to the government’s denialist criminality was the fact that it was not in the least bit bothered about whether abattoirs actually removed the banned offals from Cattle because it refused to provide any supervision of its regulations. This disinterest was picked up by abattoir owners who similarly lost interest in abiding by government regulations which reduced their profits.[15]

For some unknown reason the department of health, which might have been thought to be zealous of protecting ooman health, was opposed to the sob. According to dealler's interpretation of an article in the 'independent', "This explains how, when a ban on bovine offal took place for humans in 1989, it followed by quite some time the ban that had been decided by the pet food manufacturers to ban the offal from their product. The information came out through the Phillips Inquiry from major civil servants. These reveal that the DofH objected to the introduction of a SBO because the 'adverse publicity' that it would cause. Experts now agree that the SBO ban was the best thing that they eventually did. Jeremy Metters (deputy chief medical officer at the DofH) had already said that there was a departmental policy in 1989 to oppose an SBO ban and that this had been supported by Donald Acheson, the chief medical officer at the time. Southwood had stated that it was left as an open question as to whether an SBO ban should be introduced (the lack of recommendations in his report for an SBO ban shocked the TSE research groups at the time around the world - Ed). However, Hilary Pickles, then a civil servant in the DofH with special responsibility for BSE, told the inquiry than SBO ban was a measure 'over and above' what the department's own advisers had recommended. However, at the time MAFF officials had meetings with the representatives of the Pet food Manufactuers Assn in May 1989 where it was made clear that the pet food industry was concerned about using SBO material. It was only after this that John MacGregor (Minister for Agriculture at the time) felt there was a need for an SBO ban in humans. On June 7th MacGregor summoned Pickles and Metters to a meeting in Whitehall where he said that he wanted to call a full SBO ban despite the health department's continuing objections. A week later, on 13th June, the government announced that it intended to ban bovine offals from human food, and three days after that the pet food industry said it would also impose a voluntary ban on SBO material in cat and dog meat - but unlike the human food ban, which had to go to a consultation (and hence did not arrive until November) their ban was immediate. (In fact the advisor to the pet food industry had told them that the ban was needed, but the same person was on SEAC and did not give the same information because he had signed documents to keep information separate - Ed)”[16]

The scientist mainly responsible for promoting the sob was richard kimberlain although it was unlikely he formulated the sob policy since his expertise was in the common cold![17]. Kimberlain had been a member of the tyrell committee looking into bse. He was regarded by the livestock industry as a safe pair of hands .. “Richard kimberlin had spent many years as adviser to the drug companies and food trades telling them that bse was not a risk and would go away.”[18] This was exactly the sort of person the tories were looking for to sit on a supposedly scientific committee exploring bse. There were also suspicions that he gave information to the pet food industry which he did not pass on to the tyrell committee.[19] He believed that bse was a virino. His views seemed to have a significant political impact on the committee. Firstly, he argued that .. “Bse and scrapie were one and the same (and thus bse) would not infect humans.”[20] Secondly, he promoted the hypothesis that, as has been noted, was later adopted by the government - that bse exists only in specific offals .. “Richard kimberlin had advised the uk government that the removal of specific offals would be adequate to avoid any human risk.”[21] When the tyrell committee evolved into the new government committee, the spongiform encephalitis advisory committee (seac), many of the members of the former committee became members of the latter - including kimberlain.

By arguing that bse existed only in specific organs, the government and the maffia were in effect denying that bse was present in blood. According to ray bradley, a member of seac, “We consider blood a safe product for Cattle, so long as Cattle have been killed for human consumption.”[22] Harriet kimball, another member of seac stated .. "we were assured that there is no infectivity in blood and so we allowed renderers to continue to use it in feedstuffs."[23] The founding principle of the government's stance over bse was that this blood-borne disease was not present in blood.

In the late 1980s, if the government had told the scientific truth about bse, that it was a blood-borne disease easily transmissable to oomans, then public opinion might well have demanded a ban on the consumption of all Cattle products not just specific organs. This would have brought about the collapse of the Cattle industry. The fact that this would have been good for the health of brutish consumers, the brutish countryside, Wildlife, the Earth’s life support system, the government’s public sector borrowing requirement, and vast numbers of people starving in third world countries, was not of the slightest concern to the vast hordes of pharmers in parliament who spent their time screeching, ranting, and raving, about their need for enormous welfare benefit subsidies. These rancid tory bigots spent the rest of their time denouncing people on the dole as welfare benefit spongers. They did not believe it was pertinent to mention that they were quietly awarding themselves, as wealthy pharmers, hundreds of millions of pounds a year to sit on their backsides doing nothing.[24]

There was, however, one slight problem with the maffia’s fantasy that bse existed only in particular Cattle organs rather than in blood - how did prion proteins move from Cattles' stomachs to particular organs where they seemingly settled down for a number of years before emigrating to the brain? Scientists valiantly put forward various theories to explain how this was possible without prions being present in blood. In 1996 it was argued in ‘nature’ that, “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.”[25] Four years later even a journalist critical of the government’s handling of the bse epidemic propped up the maffia’s explanation of prions’ perambulations from the stomach via various organs to the brain, “After eating bse-contaminated meat, a person incubates the infection in his or her spleen; approximately 10 years later it travels up the spinal column into the brain which it then destroys ...”[26] This explanation makes prions seem like salmon returning to their spawning grounds after swimming the atlantic. Considering that prions have a simple chemical structure it has to be wondered what possible genetic code they could carry which would compel them to wait for a specified period of time before leaving the stomach for other organs. The view that prions charged up the spinal column to the brain is all to reminiscent of Salmon jumping a weir. To believe that these ideas were commonly discussed by grown up scientists working for some of the country’s most prestigious research organizations is almost beyond belief! It shows nothing less than the total shambles of brutland’s corporate science. It’s a shame this journalist didn’t seek to question the maffia’s alcohol-fuelled explanation which seems almost entirely untouched by scientific evidence. It was not surprising that, a few years later, these highly qualified morons were unable to distinguish between Cows and Sheep.

There were so many suggestions about the different routes that prions took between the stomach and the brain with various rest breaks in particular organs, that, at one time, major national motoring organizations were thinking about issuing a special road map indicating the likely routes the prions were taking. It didn’t matter how absurd these theories were as long as scientists didn’t mention that bse was in Cattle's blood. It was only radical scientists who dared to tell the truth - and were consequently labelled as extremists by pharming-loving politicians and their media hacks. Once again tribute ought to be paid to richard lacey, "Most emphatically, the disease agent is not just confined to the brain .. we should assume the whole animal is infected."[27]

The government’s fabrication, in 1990, of the fantasy that bse was not present in Cattle blood was the defining moment of the bse epidemic. Starting off with a fantasy means that everything deduced from it was going to become more and more fantastic. There was no way of getting back to reality once the maffia had staked its scientific reputation, and that of the veterinary service, to such a fantasy. Thereafter, politically, the epidemic became a pantomime as scientific prostitutes desperately flogged their curvacous creativity to explain the spread of bse without referring to its presence in blood. The entire edifice of the government’s policies on bse was built on the nonsense that bse was not present in blood. Every government policy for the next decade or so, both tory and labour, had to conform to this preposterous ideological fiction.

The government’s fantasy that bse was present only in specific Cattle organs rather than blood was supported by evidence from Animal experiments.[28] The maffia’s bse experiments were carried out on Mice - a species which is relatively resistant to the disease.[29] The technique used to infect these beautiful Animals was innoculation i.e. injecting bse material directly into their brain. This meant that scientists were unable to detect smaller quantities of the disease e.g. it was not possible to pour enough milk into Mice's brains to find out whether bse was present in milk. Government scientists did not regard the fact that Mice were not sensitive to bse as a drawback. On the contrary, it gave them a first class excuse to pretend that negative results showed that Cattle blood and commercially valuable Cattle organs were free of the disease when there was no evidence they were. The government was turning scientific inadequacy into scientific certainty i.e. because Mice were insensitive to small quantities of bse and couldn’t detect small quantities of the disease this 'proved' no bse was present. No scientist, except for the radicals, protested about this scientific nonsense. In later years junk scientists tried to increase Mice’s sensitivity to the disease by creating, through genetic engineering, what have been called Bovinized Mice - a new creature on the anthropogenic evolutionary treadmill.[30]

One of the main characteristics of the bse crisis was the tory government’s incremental banning of Cattle organs suspected of harbouring bse. In 1990 it banned a number of organs. Unfortunately for the pharming industry, over the following few years the disease was found in more and more Cattle organs so that virtually every year the government had to announce that yet another Cattle organ had had to be banned from public consumption.[31] Pitch battles between the government and the pharming industry were waged over each Cattle organ to determine whether it should be banned or not. The tories' first ban was on the cheapest Cattle organs to make it look as if the government was doing something to combat the disease. Thereafter the greater the profits which could be made from an organ, the greater the fight the Animal exploitation industry put up to prevent it from being banned. It would have been far less political hassle to have imposed a blanket ban on the consumption of bseef.

This incrementalism was bad enough but when it came to the incremental banning of products derived from Cattle, the complexities multiplied enormously. Cattle are processed into hundreds of products used in tens of thousands of other products. When the labour government started banning the consumption of some Cattle products (for example those used in ooman vaccines) it made headline news but there were still many other thousands of products using Cattle material that continued to be sold. The attempt to ban Cattle products resulted in battles with manufacturers over thousands of different products when it would have been far easier just to ban the consumption of bseef.

In march 1996, after a decade of denying that bse could be passed to oomans, the pharmers who made up the backbone of the tory government were forced to announce the first ten victims of bse. In this work, the disease will be referred to as bse-cjd as a reminder that it came from Cattle and that the country’s corrupt parliament and Animal exploitation industry were primarily responsible for spreading the disease. It ought to be pointed out that the tories’ never admitted that they had been completely wrong about bse nor did they ever show the slightest trace of guilt or contrition about deceiving the public for so long. On the contrary, they turned into nasty, seethingly frenzied, yobs who denounced, as anti-patriotic and traitorous, anyone making a critical comment about their subsidy laden, loss-making, disease-ridden, industry. This was surely one of the ugliest, most odious, sessions in brutish political life. And when the european commission stopped these rancid, nasty, crooks from exporting their disease-contaminated products around the world, the european community also found itself being subjected to a tidal wave of abuse. It was bse which rocketed euroscepticism from the loony, extreme right wing of the tory party to mainstream tory opinion. Let there be no mistake about this. If it wasn’t for the european commission then the tory thugs in parliament would have continued selling their bse-infected shit around the world without the slightest care about the numbers of people killed by this deadly disease. And this is the same lot of odious dross which wants to prevent saddam hussein from possessing biological weapons of mass destruction. Bse-cjd may not have wiped out large numbers of brutish carnivores but it eventually drove the tory party to madness leading to the party's near disintegration.

The government dramatically reduced the recycling of Animal protein to prevent the spread of bse amongst the country’s slave Animals. It did an extremely effective public relations job over the issue because it was commonly assumed at the time that the government had completely abolished cannibalism in the industry. As was discovered later, however, this was far from being the case.

The government was confronted by conflicting demands from the public, scientists, pharmers, and the european union. The public expected the government to eradicate bse from the country’s Cattle herds and prevent the spread of the disease to oomans. The government’s scientific advisers, seac, recommended that the most important measure to take was the deboning of all Cattle meat. The national farmers’ union (nfu) proposed a cull of all Cattle over 30 months so that only bseef from young Cattle could be sold to the public. Pharmers objected to seac’s proposal because of the cost of deboning. They believed the 30 month cull would make deboning superflous. Some commentators and some radical scientists speculated that all Cattle might have to be exterminated and the Cattle industry rebuilt from scratch.

In the end, the tory government ignored the advice of its own scientific committee because it would have made brutish bseef too expensive. It took a political decision to support the nfu’s recommendation - despite the fact that, for the next couple of years, government ministers insisted they were doing everything to abide by scientific recommendations. Once the decision had been made, both the tories and pharmers believed the deboning issue had become irrelevant but seac continued to support the proposal even for Cattle under 30 months of age. After months of rancorous, blustering with the european community, the government implemented not only a cull of all Cattle over 30 months of age but a special cull of herds likely to be infected with the disease.

A couple of points ought to be made about the government’s policy. If the culling of Cattle over 30 months old made the deboning proposal irrelevant then, logically, it should also have made the specified offals’ ban irrelevant. However, the tory government felt it wasn’t politically expedient to rescind the sob shortly after announcing the first ten victims of a new fatal disease. Unfortunately for the tories, and the country’s pharmers, the continuation of the offals’ ban had the side effect of keeping the deboning issue in play.

The government’s support for the nfu’s proposal to cull Cattle over 30 months of age meant that its objective was not to slaughter Animals with the disease but to slaughter Animals before the symptoms of the disease became apparent. In effect, the tory government was modelling the Cattle industry on the long established practices of the Sheep industry - i.e. it was once again adhering to the scrapie analogy - despite the fact that it was this analogy that had got the government into this debacle in the first place. Over the last couple of centuries the brutish Sheep industry had never bothered to eradicate scrapie - as had been done in other countries. The only measure the industry took to prevent scrapie from infecting oomans was to kill Sheep for ooman consumption before the disease became apparent. Thus the vast majority of Sheep in brutland are killed before they are one year old i.e. before symptoms of the disease they might be carrying begin to show. This is why in brutland most Sheep meat on sale for public consumption is Lamb not mutton.[32] The Cattle industry had no more intention of eradicating bse from the country’s Cattle herds than the Sheep industry had any intention of eradicating scrapie from Sheep flocks. All that the industry wanted to do was to put bseef on the market before the symptoms of bse became too clear.

What is remarkable about the tories’ performance over the announcement of the first ten victims of bse-cjd was that on march 19th they argued that oomans were completely safe from bse and that everything that needed to be done to stop the spread of the disease to oomans was being done. On march 20th they enacted a series of second rate policies to combat signs of the disease in Cattle. And on march 21st, they were back to arguing that once again the brutish Cattle were the healthiest in the world. In effect, despite the fact that 10 people were dying of bse and that within a couple of years over a hundred would be dead, there was no point at which the tories admitted that the brutish Cattle industry posed a threat to ooman health. Even more remarkable, which should provide a good insight into the wholesale corruption and insanity afflicting the tory government of the time, many tory mps totally refused to believe that the deaths of bse-cjd victims had any connection to the Animal exploitation industry.

Whilst the tory government acted to reduce the spread of bse to Cattle and oomans, it refused to take any measures to stop the spread of bse-cjd amongst oomans - whether this might be through blood transfusions, the reuse of medical/dental equipment, or manufacturers using bse-infected ooman blood products. This is the point at which an ideological farce turns into tragedy - not in the sense that the deaths of oomans is more important than the deaths of Cattle but because this refusal was the first elaboration of the tories’ fantasy that bse was not present in blood. Because the tory pharmer government had, for the previous six years, been denying that bse was present in Cattle blood, it was forced, by the logic of its own fantasy, into arguing that bse-cjd was not present in oomans’ blood. This meant there was no need for measures to stop oomans from spreading the disease through blood. Once again, the government insisted that the bse-cjd prion was moving from oomans’ stomachs to various organs and then the brain in a completely mysterious and inexplicable fashion. The tories refused to jump off this absurd bandwagon that since 1990 had been careering down the mountain. If they had publicly admitted that bse-cjd was present in ooman blood then this would have meant not merely that they would have to take urgent action to stop oomans from spreading the disease to other oomans but that they should admit that bse was in Cattle blood - leading the public to fear that all bseef was infected. As regards stopping the spread of bse-cjd amongst oomans this would have involved considerable expense which tory mps feared would interfere with the free flow of subsidies from the exchequer to pharming mps’ back pockets. The last thing tory pharmers were willing to do was admit that bse was in Cattle blood. In the end, if it was a choice between saving oomans’ lives and saving the Cattle industry, tory pharming mps were going to make only one decision and anyone who denies this basic fact of brutish politics is a naive fool.

Ever since the emergence of bse in 1984, a tiny number of scientists have pointed out that other slave Animals were also likely to be vulnerable to the disease. Scientists demanded measures to ascertain whether other species had contracted the disease and, if so, to prevent them from spreading it to oomans. The greatest concern was over Sheep.

The tory government simply denied there was any evidence that Sheep could get bse. The bse prion in Sheep is called ovine spongiform encephalopathy which, hereinafter, is referred to as bse-ose firstly, to indicate its origins and, secondly, to differentiate it from what was until recently the natural prion disease in Sheep i.e. scrapie. In the summer of 1996 it was reported that experiments had shown that it was possible for Sheep to acquire bse-ose. It is believed the experiment, like those on Mice, involved injecting quantities of bse directly into Sheep’s brains. Quite unusually for tory mps in the pharming industry who have always relied on Animal experiments to protect their vested interests by showing that something wasn’t there when it was, the tory government immediately denied the experiments had any validity outside the laboratory - not seeming to appreciate that this is true of all laboratory Animal experiments.[33] It has to be suspected that the maffia carried out the tests in laboratories simply to enable pharmers to denounce such experiments as being unrealistic if they led to conclusions pharmers didn’t like! Of course, if the experiments had suggested conclusions that pharmers had liked, then the pharmers would have deemed the experiments as scientific proof. The fact that reputable scientists have seen bse-infected Sheep in fields didn’t seem to bother zombie pharmers at all.

Once again, it was europe which came to the rescue of brutish carnivores. News of the experiments was picked up by the european pharm commissioner, frans fischler, who proposed that Sheep offals should be removed from the ooman feed chain, “It was an experiment by British scientists that proved Sheep can get mad Cow disease. The Institute of Animal Health last month published its dramatic findings in ‘The Veterinary Record’. It was this report, until yesterday hardly noticed, that prompted European Farming Commissioner Franz Fischler to announce plans to ban certain sheep products. The bse agent was found in its brain and spleen and this is now dictating which Sheep organs may face a ban.”[34] Pressure from the european community led, on september 15th 1996, to the tory government banning the consumption of Sheep and Goats’ heads, "The Heads of Sheep and Goats Order prohibits the sale for human consumption of any part of the head of a sheep or goat (with the exception of the tongue) and of any food containing any part of such heads."”[35] Since the Sheep industry rarely used Sheep brains in ooman foods this wasn’t a great step forward in protecting ooman health.

The massed ranks of tory crooks were thrown out of parliament at the 1997 general election - some of them passing within a short time to her majesty's prisons. They were replaced by a set of labour crooks pretending to be honest, straighforward people free from corporate corruption. The labour government refused to abolish the maffia - which indicated all too clearly its dependence on this bankrupt institution. This was to backfire on the government quite marvellously when, in 2001, the incompetents in the maffia failed to prevent the world’s biggest foot and mouth disaster - even though they had been warned about the appalling conditions on the pharm where the outbreak started.

Soon after the election of the labour government, a number of scientists, some from the government’s seac committee, quietly voiced their fears about bse-ose in Sheep. Jack cunningham, the secretary of state for agriculture, responded quickly by taking a precautionary measure to protect ooman health against this threat. He didn’t forget to offer compensation to pharmers inconvenienced by the regulation, “The brutish government is to ban human consumption of Sheep spleen, plus the spinal cord and meat recovered from the vertebral columns of Sheep more than a year old. Jack cunningham, the agriculture minister, announced the plans last week in a move that will extend the ban on the consumption of Sheep brains. Cunningham also announced plans to compensate farmers for the market value of Sheep suspected of having scrapie.”[36] However, cunningham rebuffed the european union's proposal that such measures should apply to Sheep over six months old - although it has to be admitted that, on this issue, the european union were none too convincing about their own commitment to such a measure.[37]

Jack cunningham had personal experience of the terrors inflicted on oomans by bse-cjd and he was the one politician, throughout the entire bse epidemic, who seemed to take the disease seriously. Unfortunately for him, he took the disease too seriously because pharmers regarded it as no more dangerous than a common cold. For example, the Sheep industry responded with its usual deep seated concern for consumers’ health as regards bse-ose, “John Thorley of the National Sheep Association noted that meat from sheep had not been identified as the cause of any cases of cjd. "It's absolute nonsense," Thorley said. "The idea that we should change the whole sheep industry as a precaution against a risk which frankly doesn't exist is ridiculous." "It's a sick joke in very bad taste," he said.”[38]

The tories’ specified offals ban was frequently extended as more and more organs were found to be infected with bse. This process continued under the labour government. In june 1997, the government banned the public consumption of Sheeps’ and Goats’ spleens. Much more significantly, however, on december 3rd 1997, cunningham banned the consumption of Cattle bones. Like all the other measures that governments had taken against bse over the last ten years, this measure was accompanied by uproar. However, this time something was distinctly different. The uproar did not come from the public or journalists insisting the government adopt more radical policies to prevent the spread of a lethal, infectious disease. This time it was stroppy opposition tories and whingeing pharmers protesting against the implementation of the ban because they still refused to believe their Animals had been contaminated by a deadly disease. It was reported, “Agriculture minister jack cunningham announced a ban on cuts such as ribs and T-bone steaks after government researchers found that dorsal root ganglia, swellings on nerve branches near the spinal chord that lie within the vertebrae, are infective. A sample of bone marrow also showed signs of infectivity, but this result needs to be confirmed to rule out contamination from other tissues. Other tissues known to be infectious are the brain, retina, spinal cord, and the end of the ileum, part of the small intestine.”[39] The problem with denialism is that once pharmers started denying their Animals were afflicted by bse they just couldn’t stop believing this lie was true - no matter how much evidence appeared to the contrary.

Cunningham’s bseef-on-the-bone ban had been recommended by seac and was in conformity with the specified offals ban. However, at this point in time neither the tories nor pharmers were in any mood to support further restrictions on the pharming industry no matter how many people might perish as a result. The bseef-on-the-bone ban eventually brought about cunningham’s political downfall. Even charles windsor and a government minister were involved in photo-opportunities with the media breaking the law against this ban. Is there not some form of social insanity involved here when government ministers and the royals encouraged people to eat a deadly biological disease and yet insisted that a harmless weed would cause untold brain damage?

The tories seemed to have outlawed cannibalism in the Animal exploitation industry in march 1996 following the announcement of the first ten victims of cjd-bse. But, this was another deception. On january 3rd 1998, jack cunningham also seemed to suggest he was abolishing cannibalism in brutland, “Pigs and chickens in britain will no longer have to live like cannibals. Agriculture minister jack cunningham has decided to act on the advice of experts on bse and other prion diseases. He is to ban “same species feeding” in order to avoid a repeat of mad cow disease in other livestock. Pigs and Chickens might also be susceptible to prion disease, cunningham’s advisers have warned, and so could in theory catch the brain wasting conditions from contaminated offal.”[40] As it turned out, however, he was also being deceptive because Animal material continued to be recycled in the Animal slavery industry.

Shortly after the labour government’s election, a number of scientists renewed their demand for the government to take action to prevent oomans from spreading the disease. They believed such measures stood a better chance of being implemented by what were supposed to be more enlightened politicians than by the seethingly greedy, arrogant, red-necked, tory backwoods, aristo, pharmers. Seac demanded a curb on ooman blood transfusions and the manufacture of ooman blood products. The case for action over ooman blood transfusions seemed incontrovertible, “The investigation of a patient with cjd who donated 35 units of blood in 20 years identified 27 persons who definitely received his blood and eight who probably received blood; for 20 units, the recipients could not be identified (64). Eighteen (33%) of the identified recipients had died. None of the recipients had exhibited neurologic disease, although some were observed only briefly; only eight were observed for longer than 5 years.”[41]

Despite the rebuff from the labour government, a small number of scientists continued to press the government over the issue. On february 27th 1998, the government banned a wide range of ooman blood products - although it continued to refuse to do anything about blood transfusions, “More than 30 treatments made from british blood and needed by up to 350,000 people each year are to be withdrawn because they might spread bse-cjd, health officials warned yesterday. Treatments such as growth factor for haemophiliacs or albumin supplies for burns victims are pooled from up to 66,000 donors at a time. If just one of them is suffering from bse-cjd, and if the disease could be spread by blood - itself an unknown - then in theory huge numbers could be at risk. Drug companies have been advised to stop using u.k. blood products in vaccines and other products. Last year health officials discovered that 3 of 23 people who contracted bse-cjd had been blood donors. Blood is a mix of a liquid known as plasma and red and white blood cells. .. the change could annually affect 100,000 surgical patients, up to 90,000 pregnant women, and tens of thousands who need hepatitis vaccines, tetanus immunization and special diagnostic treatment.” [42] Quite why it should believe action was necessary over ooman blood products but not blood transfusions or the reuse of surgical/dental instruments is difficult to discern.

The government’s decision to ban a number of ooman blood products was relatively modest but, ideologically, it was a dramatic change of policy. This was the first breach in the 1990 founding proposition that tse diseases were not present in blood. However, the government refused to admit that if bse-cjd was present in ooman blood then bse must also be present in Cattle blood and that bse-ose must be present in Sheep blood thereby requiring a ban on the public consumption of Cattle and Sheep corpses. This contradiction in its policy was left suspended in mid-air - kept up by nothing more than the hot air being expelled from the foul smelling orifices of the landowning pharming elite.

It wasn’t until july 18th 1998, a year after coming into office, that the labour government finally took measures to reduce the spread of bse-cjd through ooman blood transfusions, “Donor blood will be cleaned to stop transfusion patients getting bse-cjd, the government announced yesterday. Supplies will be stripped of their white cells, which could harbour the human form of mad cow disease. But the £80 million a year programme will still not be 100% safe, according to sceptics. They claim the process, called leucodepletion, will still leave some white cells behind. Mr dobson acted after experts estimated that one in 125 transfusion patients could be at risk from blood contaminated by the new cjd variant.”[43]

Dealler highlights an article suggesting it would be months before the government’s leucodepletion measure would be fully implemented. This meant that in the mean time people would continue to be at risk from bse-cjd in blood transfusions, “This explains that, as 3 of the cases of bse-cjd were found to have been blood donors, and plenty of other people incubating the disease will also be donors, therefore the blood supply could not be looked on as being safe. It was clear that the slimming down of the NBA that has taken place will require that the technicians are re-hired to carry out the leucodepletion. It meant that while all this gets ready many of the 350,000 recipients of blood in the UK every year will continue to receive the blood from non-leucodepleted sources. Early in the day the DofH press office had been saying that the risk from cjd in blood was less than one in 4 million and this was crushed rapidly by the press.”[44]

In july 1998, the labour government banned the use of tallow in ooman medicines. However, quite contradictorily, it continued to allow the use of tallow in Animal feed. According to stephen dealler’s notes,“It is not clear exactly why there is 'no scientific evidence that tallow contains infectivity', however they say that the hydrophobic nature of the tallow and it being made partly from bone marrows in the formation of gelatin means that tallow must be looked on as a risk. What they have not said, however is that tallow continued to be in bovine feed in the UK long after the feed ban of 1988. Eventually it was twigged that this might not be a good idea but Wilesmith had said that the distribution of disease was not the same as the spread of tallow from an infective source ... but he had far too poor data. So now things appear to be getting worse for tallow and the original demand of the UK ban on tallow exports seems to continue.”[47] This showed the increasing muddle over the government’s policy for combating bse and bse-cjd. It was being more cautious where oomans were in immediate contact with possibly contaminated material, but less so where they were not.

It was after the government took these measures against bse-cjd in ooman blood and medicines that mcblair sacked jack cunningham, the secretary of state for agriculture. Whether such measures were the final straw for mcblair after intense opposition to them from the Animal exploitation industry is not known. Mcblair had appointed cunningham explicitly to curb the subsidies being given to the pharming industry and cunningham’s sacking was a stab in the back for the efforts he had made to follow the prime minister's orders. It was the end of the labour government’s hopes of combating bse and signalled labour’s capitulation to the Animal exploitation industry. In the late 1980s thatcher’s sacking of edwina curry became a striking symbol of the dominance of pharmers’ interests over those of consumers. It has to be suggested that mcblair’s sacking of cunningham was an even greater act of servility to pharmers’ interests than the sacking of edwina curry - after all, she was only a minister, cunningham was the secretary of state for agriculture.

It was mentioned earlier that richard kimberlain was a member of seac, a consultant to the drugs industry, and had been influential in shaping the tory government’s policy over bse. In may 1999 it transpired that he’d condoned the use of vaccines made from brutish Cattle during the bse epidemic, “The department of health approved the use of thousands of human vaccines for diseases such as tetanus and whooping cough made with material likely to have come from bse-infected cattle. This was despite warnings in 1989 from one of the Government's key scientific advisers that injecting such material potentially posed 'the greatest risk' of transmitting bse to humans. Parents have never been told their children may have been in danger. Before the bse scare in 1988, vaccines for diseases such as measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus and whooping cough used bovine serum taken from British cows. In 1989, the then-confidential Southwood committee report concluded that 'the greatest risk in theory would be from the injection of material derived from bovine brain or lymphoid tissue'. He later described the risk as 'moderately high'. As a result, in 1989, the Committee on Safety of Medicines issued guidelines that vaccine materials should come from safe herds in countries with no reported cases of bse. Yet this left a stockpile of vaccines already made using material from British cattle likely to have been infected. The vaccines had lifespans of up to five years and could have been used on children as recently as 1993. Until now, the Department of Health has not disclosed what happened to the stockpile of vaccines. In a recent parliamentary answer, Health Minister Tessa Jowell merely confirmed they were not 'disposed of or discontinued'. But Dr Richard Kimberlin, a bse expert who acts as a consultant to drug companies and also advised the Committee on Safety of Medicines at the time of the scare, told the Observer: 'The risks associated with the stockpiled vaccines were not perceived great enough to have them destroyed . . . so yes, these continued to be used.' He said the stockpile would have amounted to 'thousands of doses'.”[48]

10. Bse - a Story told in Blood.
		10.1: Blood is the Key to Understanding the Scientific and Political Corruption Surrounding the Bse Epidemic. Bse is a complex disease. The politics of the bse is similarly complex. Regrettably, most people have never bothered to try and understand the complexities of the disease nor the political and scientific machinations involved in the handling of the bse epidemic. They’ve long since lost interest in the bse issue so there is no likelihood of them developing an interest now even if they are still threatened by bse infection. However, there is one fairly quick and easy way of understanding the scientific, and political, corruption entailed by the government’s defence of pharmers’ interests against the health and well being of consumers. The history of the bse epidemic is written in blood. This is true not merely in the sense that nearly 200,000 Animals died of bse, or were slaughtered because they’d contracted the disease, and that four million Animals were pre-emptively slaughtered in case they might be afflicted with the disease, but in the sense that arguments over the existence of bse in blood are central to understanding the way politicians manipulated the presentation of the disease during this dark chapter of brutish political and scientific life.

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10. Bse - a Story told in Blood.