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: 9. Cow Eats Man

9. Cow Eats Man

BBC Radio 4 - The Cows Are Mad, 9. Cow Eats Man

One of the most disturbing BSE theories so far causes an international incident.

One of the most disturbing BSE theories so far causes an international incident - but will there ever be an answer to the origin of BSE? The top BSE scientist is still looking.

Did mad cow disease actually come from humans? Alan Colchester, the doctor who raised suspicions about the Kent meat rendering plant, has one of the most disturbing theories so far. 

He publishes an academic paper that suggests a grisly international trade in decomposing animal remains could have brought the disease to the UK, after human bones picked out of the Ganges in India is unknowingly mixed with the cargo. 

Will there ever be an answer to the origin of BSE? Scientist John Collinge is still looking.

Written, presented and produced by Lucy Proctor

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