The Cows Are Mad

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The strange tale of the 1990s BSE epidemic.

Science has still failed to definitively answer two major questions about mad cow disease - where did it come from and how did humans get it?

The Covid-19 pandemic has been one of the weirdest things any of us has lived through. But there was another sickness that once stalked the nation and turned things very strange for a while.
 
In the 1990s Britain was hit by an epidemic of a fatal neurological disease in cows that also killed 178 humans. Science was split between government assurances of safety and dissidents warning of disaster. Trust in officials took a battering. Facts became blurred. And the grisly truth about our global industrialised meat industry was revealed.
 
30 years on, scientists and activists are still searching for answers to two big questions - where did mad cow disease originally come from and how did humans get infected? This crazy tale of cannibal cows, competing origin theories, and scientific dead ends lives on as the madness continues to spread.

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The Cows Are Mad: 1. Zombie Apocalypse

1. Zombie Apocalypse

BBC Radio 4 - The Cows Are Mad, 1. Zombie Apocalypse

Suspicion surrounds a meat rendering plant in Kent, sparking paranoia.

Suspicion surrounds a meat rendering plant with a dark past, sparking paranoia in the Kent countryside as early cases of BSE emerge.

Hidden deep in the heart of the Kent countryside is an abandoned factory with a dark past. In the 1980s and 1990s it processed tens of thousands of dead cows - some of which are thought to have been infected with a disease that would devastate British farming. 

Then, when early human cases of BSE began to emerge in people living close to the rendering plant, paranoia also infected Kent’s countryside communities. People wanted answers - but there were none. 

Today, science has failed to definitively answer two major questions about mad cow disease - where did it originally come from and how did humans get it? 

Written, presented and produced by Lucy Proctor.

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