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: 2. Hypothesis

2. Hypothesis

BBC Radio 4 - The Cows Are Mad, 2. Hypothesis

A group of vets battle to stop a deadly new disease.

A farm vet has the ominous realisation that a new disease is emerging - but the government doesn’t want to spark a panic.

It’s the mid 1980s and farm vet Colin Whitaker has the ominous realisation that a new disease is emerging in Kent’s cow herds. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food knows about it - and is determined to keep a lid on this potentially devastating news. But by 1987 officials know they have to act. 

Government epidemiologist John Wilesmith is given a secret mission to find out how to stop the spread of what’s become known as BSE. He dons his wellies and works out one of the few things anyone can say for certain about the cause of the epidemic.

Written, presented and produced by Lucy Proctor.

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