This article is classified "Real"
What is all that panic about then? Well, it's a long story, and goes back
to the early 1980s, and a small area of London, known as Westminster, the
home of the British Parliament [1]. Events transpired that allowed lower
temperatures to be used in the cooking of animal offal, specifically
sheep, which would then be fed to other animals, specifically cows. The
lower heat allowed the disease from the sheep, already infected with
scrapie, to pass onto the cows.
Scrapie has, for many years, been a disease in sheep which causes infected
proteins to attach to the normal proteins in the animal's brain, thereby
destroying the brain cells, causing their brains to slowly change into a
spongy mess. After the initial incubation period, which is generally up to
ten years [2], the process doesn't take long, and leads to inevitable brain
damage, and then death. It is incurable, but it was generally believed
that it couldn't be passed to other animals, so they didn't worry about it
very much.
Now, the poor old cows who had been fed this infected meat, began to
develop similar symptoms years later. This was noticed by the government,
who took immediate action to sweep it under the carpet and deny everything
[3]. The most infectious parts of the animal, including the spinal cord,
were later banned from food, but were still used for several years by
certain unscrupulous farmers, and it is said that much of this meat found
its way into the most inexpensive beef products. In total, infected meat
was in the food chain for a good few years, during the mid 80s, and
millions of people were subjected to it, blissfully unaware of the
possible damage it might cause them in later years.
The panic really began in the early 90s, when scientists started to make
the link between the disease in cows, which is now known as BSE [4], and
the scrapie disease in sheep. Later, certain cases of CJD [5], a similar
brain disease in humans, began to catch their collective eye.
Usually a disease in old people only, CJD cases began to show in people as
young as their early 20s; people that would have been at the height of
their beef-eating, and specifically beef-burger eating, years in the
mid-80s. One victim was someone who had since turned vegetarian.
Then, about a year ago, the British Government took all of the speculation
they had, and the inconclusive case the scientists had, and made an
announcement to the effect that: "British Beef is probably safe, but it
might not be, and you might all die, but you might not, but if you stop
eating it, it may not make any difference anyway because you're probably
already infected." It was predicted that the 20-or-so cases, so far,
would balloon in a short period, which hasn't so-far happened. Strangely
enough, mass panic followed, and beef sales dropped rapidly; they have,
only very recently, began to pick up again.
As a result of the announcement and the panic button the British
Government had finally pressed, after years of denial and no action, all
of Europe, and most of the rest of the world, banned the import of British
beef, to protect their food markets from infected food.
It was decided that, to allow British beef to be exported once more,
foreign markets should be shown that Britain was doing something
constructive to destroy the disease once and for all; to wit, a wholesale
cull of all cows. This was later cut down to older cows, who were more
likely to have the disease now, as the young'ns were no longer eating any
infected food.
To this point, the British government has come up with many excuses to
avoid dealing with this problem, including the recent, "oh, the disease
will die out in a few years anyway." This pleased nobody. The beef
export ban has still to be lifted, as of November 1996.
Of course, the next few years will show the result of their blunder:
whether millions of people will die, or the disease will indeed fizzle
out, and nothing will happen. Whatever does actually happen, the cases
that have been discovered, so far, provide the only link, and though it is
not proven, it is still very spooky.
The most frightening thing is that all of these diseases remain incurable,
and there is no sign of a cure being found in the near future, added to
which, you have no way of knowing if you have the disease inside you right
now.
[1] Ruled by majority, by the right-wing Conservative ("Tory") Party,
which was initially led by Margaret Thatcher, and later "led" by John
Major. At this time, they still control British government, as they
have done for the last seventeen years.
[2] This figure is the most popular, but every time I see a news report,
the figure increases. The highest estimate I've heard, so far, is
thirty.
[3] Some might say, that's what governments are for. But these, I assure
you, are experts.
[4] "Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy", also known as "Mad Cow Disease".
[5] "Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease."