On Thursday night I watched a horrific Dispatches documentary on Channel 4 about BSE. It levelled accusations at the former Tory government that were frightingly familiar to students of the hepatitis C scandal.
Among the allegations were claims that research from the government's own veterinary laboratories were censored for reasons of political expediency, that the results of two other research projects were ignored and that these two lapses may have delayed their admission of a link between BSE and CJD by four years. And because the admission was delayed, effective action was similarly delayed.
The claims were backed by a number of eminently qualified expert witnesses. But all of this, sometimes complex, scientific evidence was overshadowed by two very human incidents.
The first was the attempt by the minister for agriculture, John Gummer, to inspire confidence in British beef by eating a hamburger. He contrived to turn a reasonable photo opportunity into a public relations disaster by foisting the burger on his own daughter, Cordelia. This was gruesome enough, but the fact that he probably already knew of the risks inherent in eating beef lent the scene a more sinister edge.
The second was an interview with a young woman whose husband had succumbed to the disease. She was angry, but calmly angry. Each stage of the onset of the disease was explained to her in harrowing detail.
She communicated her loss in the simplest, clearest language. No hysterics. No big show of grief. And that simplicity left you in no doubt about how profoundly her life had been transformed.
She and her husband had taken no risks. They had eaten the sort of food everyone was eating and that the government had said was safe. "But," she said, "someone was taking the risks with us."
So now our Minister for Health and Children, Brian Cowen, has warned us that there is a risk attached to eating beef on the bone. It was the right decision, if not the most politically expedient. By alerting us to the risk he has antagonised the biggest and most powerful lobby group there is, the farmers. This was a courageous judgment made in the interests of our nation's health.
He has said that he was following the advice given to him by a committee of experts. In fact, it now appears that he tempered that advice with some of the common sense he stands accused of abandoning. Under close questioning on Morning Ireland one committee member, Dr Catherine Keohane, said the committee had recommended that "immediate arrangements should be put in place to ensure that no meat with the backbone should be sold to the consumer".
Brian Cowen's decision has since been vindicated by a European Union committee which has gone so far as to advocate a ban on lamb and goat meat on the bone as well.
And yet the Minister remains under fire. The Irish Veterinary Union claimed that his warning will do "unnecessary damage" to the Irish food industry. They talk about the potential effect on consumer confidence.
I hope consumer confidence is affected. I hope that consumers think long and hard about what they are eating or feeding to their families. One of the very few things we know for sure about this disease is that it is fatal in all cases. If the Minister's advice saves just one person from contracting and being killed by it surely the "damage" to any industry is irrelevant.
Even if the European Union imposes the sort of ban Brian Cowen has refused to implement the question of the degree of damage this would cause is open to speculation. The Department of Agriculture has gone on record as saying that the proscription of beef and lamb on the bone would have "no major effect" on Irish meat production and sales. They explained that the vast majority of Irish beef was already sold in boneless form and 80 per cent of our lamb is slaughtered under the proposed 12-month age limit.
Our understanding of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) and, more importantly, the new variant (nvCJD) is limited. What the Department of Health is faced with is a potential threat to our health. A disease that can lie dormant for up to 30 years, has 100 per cent morbidity, no cure and no sign of a cure, and has killed 23 people, this is an affliction that until recently could not be positively disagnosed, except at a postmortem examination, and takes a year to kill.
It is precisely because we know so little about nvCJD that we must be cautious.
A MISTAKEN assumption could cost lives. Britain's failure to act as soon as the disease was identified may already have condemned thousands to a lingering death. We have here an opportunity not to repeat the mistakes that were made with HIV and hepatitis C; a chance to take precautions that may eradicate the disease completely. At the very least, we can let people know that a real risk exists.
But getting rid of CJD is likely to lead to another outbreak of a very nasty condition: one identified and named by the Taoiseach during the week. Compensatitis is likely to afflict our beef and sheep farmers. They will want money from the Government, the European Union and whoever else will sit still long enough to be subpoenaed.
Neither the Government nor the European Union is responsible for nvCJD. Nobody is. Nobody could have predicted that the feeding practices used in intensive farming would have resulted in such a bizarre and unfortunate outcome.
In insurance parlance this would have to be counted as an act of God. It is in the nature of farming to be dependent on acts of God. Sometimes benevolent acts will result in bumper harvests. Sometimes they will ruin an entire crop. Asking the people to cover the costs of these misfortunes through our own Government or through the EU is unreasonable.
When Brian Cowen issued his warning he tempered it by saying that he himself would continue to eat T-bone steaks. Until we know for sure that this disease has disappeared completely, I won't.