Peter Hall showed the first signs of depression around Christmas, 1994. In five months he was in a wheelchair. He died at age 20 of Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease, a relentlessly progressive and invariably fatal dementia [95] which usually attacks people in their sixties[ 33]; cases under 30 are exceedingly rare [112]. Around the next Christmas, an uproar ensued when leading British neuropathologist Sir Bernard Tomlinson refused to feed his children burgers out of fear that they might contract this disease from infected beef[102]. His fears were realized on Wednesday, March 20, 1996, when the British government announced that the most likely explanation of Peter's death and 9 other recently diagnosed cases of Creutzfeldt-Jacob Disease among English young people [41] was exposure to bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) [71].
'Very unhappy' were the words British vet Colin Whitaker used to describe the dairy [12] cow who became the world's first documented case of BSE on a fine spring morning in 1985[123]. Dubbed Mad Cow Disease by the British press[53], BSE has by now a decade later stricken over 150,000 cattle [106]. The fear now is that through the consumption of infected beef Britain may be on the brink of the largest public health calamity since the Black Death[121] with worst case scenario estimates involving the deaths of millions of people[101].
Creutzfeldt-Jacob disease (CJD) is a human spongiform encephalopathy[70] whose standard clinical picture involves weekly deterioration[67] into blindness and epilepsy[59] while one's brain perforates like swiss-cheese[105]. The World Health Organization recently agreed with the British government's conclusion that there is a new variant of CJD whose appearance is best explained by the BSE epidemic in cows because of a number of consistent unusual features.[136]. Other than being extraordinarily young[ 41], the human victims also had atypical EEGs[96] and took twice as long to die[33]. The real clincher came, though, when their brains were autopsied[108]. Along with unusual psychiatric symptoms[80], the brain pathology was found to be vividly reminiscent[69] of Kuru, a disease found in a New Guinea tribe of cannibals which ate the brains of their dead[46a]. In the words of Germany's leading expert on CJD "everything suggests that BSE is the cause..."[93].
The probable [107] link between BSE and CJD, viewed by Britain's Chief Medical Officer as "cause for serious concern", came as a complete reversal of the position the government held for a decade[58]. The next day 5 European countries banned the importation of British beef[37] and 10,000 British schools dropped beef from their menus[30]. That Friday McDonald's stopped serving British beef[29] and by Monday, Burger King[119] and Wendy's[125] stopped too. And Tuesday, less than a week after the announcement was made, the European Union decided to quarantine the island, voting an immediate and indefinite worldwide ban on the export of British beef[87]. The same day in one of the biggest operations in decades, Ireland deployed extra police with troops on standby to seal off its border to prevent cattle smuggling [94]. Finally, two days later, British beef was banned in Britain, but only from cattle considered to be higher at risk[117].
The debatedly [70] novel[3] infectious agents that cause spongiform encephalopathies like CJD and BSE evoke no immune response [50] and consequently may slowly accumulate[14] for an invisible latency period of up to 30 years.[60] No one knows how many people have already been infected. John Pattison, Dean of the University College of London Medical School and Chairman of the British government's Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee (SEAC), thinks there could be 500,000 people already incubating CJD[27]. "At this stage," he adds," we have to say it's totally unpredictable."[88] Needless to say, he does not feed beef to his grandson[82]. Microbiologist Steven Dealler, secretary of the Spongiform Encephalopathy Research Campaign, places the possible death count at 2 million people[118]. Professor Pattison reportedly agreed with this worst case scenario assessment.[118] This could mean up to a half million deaths a year as the epidemic peaks into the next century according to Richard Lacey[64] , a microbiology consultant for the World Health Organization and child health specialist.[68]
Called the "most intriguing, unsolved puzzle in modern biology"[141] it is now close to being generally accepted that the cause of both the disease in humans and cows isn't a virus or a bacteria, but a "prion", an infectious protein.[78] Not only is it not known how they replicate[6], the whole concept challenges the basic tenets of biology.[45] Because of their unique makeup, they are practically invulnerable. They are not adequately destroyed by cooking[13], canning[14], nor freezing.[40] Chemicals or enzymes which degrade nucleic acids[55], proteolytic enzymes of the digestive tract[49], and usable doses of UV or ionizing radiation[40] are all ineffective in destroying their infectivity. Even heat sterilization[40], domestic bleach[59a], and formaldehyde[14] sterilization have little or no effect. In fact, the only way to ensure that one's burger is safe is to marinate it in Drain-O (or other concentrated alkali).[59] They are the smallest[9], most lethal self-perpetuating biological entities in the world.[74] In six years, BSE has gone from the most serious threat ever posed to British agriculture[44] to what the Prime Minister calls the worst crisis to confront the government in general, since the Falklands War.[72] Widespread fear first struck in 1989[19]. Only months after the government concluded that the disease probably wouldn't spread to other species[1], Max, someone's pet Siamese, died of a hitherto unknown feline spongiform encephalopathy[68]. BSE-infected pet food was "overwhelmingly the most li kely explanation."[36] And then zoo animals started dropping dead.[4] Together, this sparked a public uproar[19] with unprecedented media attention.[50] Fearing its spread into the human population, hospitals[34], nursing homes[34], and over 2000 schools[ 21], affecting over 750,000 school children[7], stopped serving beef or restricted its consumption. By May 1990, a quarter of the population reportedly refused to eat beef.[38] In six months beef prices dropped 10[5]-25%[3], devastating the cattle industry. The final blow came when Australia[43], Israel[43], and a dozen other countries[24] banned the importation of British beef because of the BSE epidemic.
After a $6.5 million advertising campaign touting red-meat consumption, from Britain's Meat and Livestock Commission[34], though, and the Minister of Agriculture munching burgers with Cordelia[100], his four-year-old daughter for the TV cameras[16], the schools put beef back on the menu[50] and beef consumption regained semi-normal levels.[38] Despite continued warnings from scientists like Lacy, the European community had lifted its ban and most other countries had greatly relaxed their trade restricti ons[7] until news of these first human deaths recently broke.[90]
Now with the worldwide ban in effect, Britain has been forced to agree to kill and incinerate[26] (or perhaps mince and bury)[103] millions of cattle[75] at a total cost of billions of dollars[11]. The decision is supported by the Minister of Agriculture[119] and the National Farmer's Union[119], while admitting the mass slaughter would be 'too horrific to contemplate.'[120] In response to the proposed slaughter, an Hindi group in India offered the afflicted cows sanctuary while a Cambodian newspaper suggested that the cows be used to detonate the country's buried landmines.[145]. The extermination may not have eliminated the epidemic, though, as evidence exists that prions can remain infectious for years in the soil[61] and/or may be harbored by insects.[76] A better solution would seem to be to finding out which cows were actually infected instead of just indiscriminate killing. Such a test for detecting BSE in live cattle was offered to the British government seven years ago by Harash Narang, a clinical virologist with the public health service[85]. Dr. Narang was subsequently fired, and reportedly had his tires slashed five times, his home broken into, and his brakes tampered with[126]. Critics presume the government did not want the public to know how much infected beef was entering the food chain[126] and therefore discouraged such tests to protect the $4.6 billion beef industry[85] In fact Dr. Lacey claims that the British government has at all stages concealed facts and corrupted evidence beyond much reasonable doubt[68].
The Labor Party charged the government with a "reckless disregard for public health"[119], "seriously complacent decisions"[121] historically and a "pathetic"[90] response to the current crisis. Others echoed similar charges of procrastination and delay [85]. A New Scientist editorial explained how the British government "tried to push scientific advice aside when it did not suit them."[106] An editorial in The Lancet criticized the government for making the error of equating the absence of evidence of risk with evidence of little or no risk.[82] Statements like "There's no way of predicting..." seemed to transform in the halls of government into "There is no evidence..."[107]. British agriculture minister Angela Browning's January pronouncement that her government's stance was "ultra precautionary" [115] bears a certain resemblance to similar statements now coming from the United States government.[116] Six months ago Britain's Prime Minister was still asserting that there was absolu-tely no connection between BSE and CJD[115] and still attempts to reassure the public that beef is safe to eat to this day[82]. Likewise the USDA continues to adamantly parrot day after day that there is no BSE in the USA[130].                                       
one of many imported from the UK before both Canada and the US banned the importation of British cattle, was found on a ranch in Alberta, Canada.[8] Of the 499[116] British cattle imported into the US before the 1989 ban, 188 of them have been melted down into lard and protein[8] (presumably for other livestock to eat) and 35 remain unaccounted for.[116] One of the imported bulls slaughtered had a "central nervous system abnormality" of which the USDA reported, "There is no definitive evidence that [the bull] either had or did not have BSE."[8] Although the importation of British beef has been banned from the US for a decade due to an unrelated disease[7], over 13 tons of meat and bone meal, which has been implicated in the birth of the British epidemic, has come into the US from England between 1982 and 1989.[2]
"BSE was 'almost certainly'[10] caused by feeding cattle ground up, dead, diseased sheep"[18] infected with an ovine spongiform encephalopathy known as scrapie.[20] In modern agribusiness, cows are no longer herbivores. "Protein concentrates" (or meat and bone meal, both euphemisms for mashed- up bits of other animals left over from the slaughterhouse) are fed to dairy cows[22] to improve milk production,[65] for example. The real problem now, though, is not that we've made cows meat eaters but that we've turned them into cannibals as well; the recycling of the remains of infected cows into cattle feed[60] has probably led to the epidemic's explosive spread.[42] An editorial in the British Medical Journal described BSE as resulting "from an accidental  experiment on the dietary transmissibility of prion disease between sheep and cows."[57] A subsequent experiment of this kind, with humans, probably occurred in England in the late 1980's when meat contaminated with BSE entered the food chain.[57] The result of this experiment is awaited "as we live through the incubation period" over the next decades.[57]
Indigenous conditions here conducive to a BSE outbreak include the presence of scrapie in 39 states.[54] The 40-year[52] USDA Scrapie Eradication Program has been deemed a "dismal failure"[63] and even implicated in the recent rise of scrapie-infected sheep.[54] Admitting defeat, the USDA scrapped the Scrapie Eradication Program 2 years ago and replaced it with an "entirely voluntary" control program.[21] The proportion of sheep to cattle in the US is dramatically smaller than in the British Isles though , which helps minimize the risk of an outbreak.[65] This is a moot point, however, if BSE is already here. Since 1947 there have been 25 outbreaks of Mink Spongiform Encephalopathy (also called TME) on US fur farms.[22] This perplexed researchers who were unable to orally infect mink with scrapie-infected sheep brains.[49] A clue came in 1985 when TME wiped out a population of minks in Wisconsin who hadn't eaten any sheep.[35] Their diet consisted almost exclusively of dairy cattle called "downers,"[54] an industry term describing a syndrome in which cows mysteriously drop down and are too sick to get up.
The possibility, then, that US dairy herds were harboring some form of BSE intrigued University of Wisconsin veterinary scientist Richard Marsh.[65] To test this, Marsh inoculated US cattle with the infected mink brains.[49] As predicted, they died.[49] And when he fed the brains of these cows to healthy
(Sorry.  Lost this bit due to computer problem.  Believe brains were fed to healthy mink who then came down with TSE.)
BSE cases have been severely underreported with as few as 60% of clinical cases reaching UK government statistics. It was reported in the Sunday Telegraph that "British officials believe that some European countries concealed or ignored evidence of 'mad cow disease' for fear of the consequences for their own farming industries."[124] The problem, as many English pundits saw it, is that the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Food represents the interests of both consumers and the beef industry.[78] A similar conflict of interest exists in the United States.
The mandate of the USDA is to promote agricultural products but also to protect consumer health. In Britain, at least, it would seem that the government's attempt at protecting the beef industry by concentrating more on PR crisis management than on doing anything substantial ended up not only hurting the industry, but consumers, farmers, and the government as well.[98] With scientists like Marsh saying "The exact same thing could happen over here as happened in Britain,"[35] and with beef consumption already at a thirty-year low,[34] the USDA is justifiably worried. There was even a complaint filed with the FDA concerning a woman with CJD who had been taking a dietary supplement containing bovine tissue.[4] Like England, we have been feeding dead cows to living cows for decades.[7] In fact, here in the US a minimum of 14% of the remains of rendered cattle is fed to other cows[49] (another 50% goes on the pig and chicken menu).[2] In 1989 alone almost 800 million pounds of processed animals were fed to beef and dairy cattle.[115] Partly because of this, the USDA has conceded that "the potential risk of amplification of the BSE agent is much greater in the United States" than in Britain.[8]
To make things worse, there has been a dramatic increase in the use of animal protein in commercial dairy feed since 1987.[35,49] The recent introduction of bovine growth hormone will only increase the need for rendered animal proteins in the rations of dairy cattle--of whom we eat 2.6 billion pounds of annually[8]. According to top encephalopathy expert Joseph Gibbs, one out of every million cattle naturally develops BSE.[65] A single teaspoon of ingested high infectivity meat and bone meal is thought to be enough to cause BSE in a cow[80]. Between this and evidence that prions may be able to adapt to their hosts and become more virulent with time[22], it would seem absolutely necessary to enact the ban and stop recycling this disease through US cattle. In June 1993 the Foundation on Economic Trends, a Washington public interest group[191], petitioned the FDA to ban all feeding of ruminants (cows, sheep) to other ruminants as the European Commonwealth had done three years before[23]. The legal petition was largely ignored[115]. The next year the FDA did propose to at least stop feeding sheep offal to cows, but it was blocked by vehement protests from the rendering and may be dying from eating burgers, another public interest group, the International Center for Technology Assessment, filed a similar legal petition[115]. Leading consumer group Public Voice for Food and Health Policy has since also called for a ban[[135].
Three days after the latest petition was filed the meat industry announced a "voluntary" ban on feeding cows to cows[115]. In Britain they tried a similar voluntary ban; it failed miserably[115]. In the US the same rendering industry promised to stop feeding sheep brains to cows years ago; the FDA confirmed that this failed also[84]. On April 3, 1996 the World Health Organization called for a worldwide ban on feeding animal tissues to livestock[134] The FDA has promised to "expedite" such regulation s.[132] This is expected to mean that putting a formal ban in place will take 12 to 18 months[132]. Even with the law in Britain, though, surprise random inspections last year showed half of the English slaughterhouses in violation of the cow to cow ban regulations[91], but it is better than no law at all[105].
US officials admit that it is "very difficult" to verify compliance with the current voluntary ban[32]. In fact weeks after the "voluntary" ban was announced by the industry the feeding of ruminant protein was still continuing at rates of millions of pounds a day[115], supporting the director[104] of the Center for Media and Democracy John Stauber's contention that the oxymoronic voluntary ban was just a "worthless PR sham".[132]
A spokesperson for the National Cattlemen's Beef Association (NCBA), admitted 3 years ago that his industry could indeed find economically feasible alternatives to feeding rendered animal protein, but that the NCBA did not want to set a precedent of being ruled by "activists"[Food Chemical News, July 5, 1993]. Another NCBA spokesperson, Gary Weber, appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show this April[131]. Clearly alarmed and disturbed by the fact that cows in the US are forced to eat cattle remains, Oprah swore she would never eat another burger again[131]. Our government knew that the such feeding practices would be "vulnerable to media scrutiny" as portrayed in an internal PR crisis management document.[115] After Oprah tried to remind the audience that cows were supposed to be herbivores, Dr. Weber defended the practice by stating "Now keep in mind, before you--you view the ruminant animal, the cow, as simply a vegetarian--remember that they drink milk."[131]
Cattle prices plummeted after the show aired.[97] The president of the National Cattlemen's beef Association called Oprah "a cheerleader for...anti-beef propaganda."[203] "We're not going to sit back and let trash TV trash a vital industry..." said the Texas Agriculture Commissioner in a prepared statement.[97] Texas agriculture officials are planning to bring a lawsuit against the opposing guest on the show, Howard Lyman, a cattle rancher turned vegetarian, under a 1995 state law that prohibits unfounded comments about perishable food items[97]. These are among the same Texas officials that responded to the tragic news of the human deaths in Britain by staging a mocking April 4 publicity stunt cook-out.[115] On the show was Beryl Rimmer, whose 16 year  old granddaughter lay in a coma, blind and dying, one of the ten diagnosed with the new variant of CJD[131]. A doctor from the government's CJD surveillance unit reportedly told her not to make her granddaughter's plight public; she should "think of the economy and the Common Market."[68]