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: 6. Stray Burger

6. Stray Burger

BBC Radio 4 - The Cows Are Mad, 6. Stray Burger

A grieving mum questions the official narrative on BSE and embarks on a quest for answers. Thirty years on, a former government minister casts doubt on the official BSE story.

Mother Christine Lord becomes obsessed with the now infamous episode of agriculture minister John Gummer feeding his daughter a beef burger on TV in 1990. She wants to know what killed her son - and beef is the prime suspect. But as she investigates, she finds all is not as it seems. 

Three decades on from the incident, John Gummer casts doubt on the widely-believed story that infected beef is what caused vCJD in humans. 

Written, presented and produced by Lucy Proctor

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