Regulatory rigor mortis
While MAFF ministers and officials often treated the conclusions of the SWP as if they had been definitive, the underlying science evolved rapidly. By contrast the regulatory regime seemed to have rigor mortis. Despite claims of ‘flexibility’ MAFF painted itself into a corner by asserting that risks to human health were non-existent. New expert committees were established, along with a ban on ‘specified bovine offal’, which was introduced primarily to pre-empt voluntary initiatives by the food industry. New evidence from ‘Mad Max’ of feline spongiform encephalopathy and similar pathologies in zoo animals was discounted, and the policy regime was defended against new evidence rather than developed in the light of that evidence. Eventually evidence that a novel form of Creutzfeldt–Jakob Disease had emerged in young people, and that the most plausible cause was exposure to the BSE agent through food, torpedoed the UK government's approach to managing BSE.
Keywords: policy rigor mortis, specified bovine offal ban, Mad Max, feline spongiform encephalopathy, mechanically recovered meat, CJD
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .