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BSE: the Ministry of Agriculture ‘cannot be trusted’

The Ministry of Agriculture ‘cannot be trusted on issues of food safety’, a leading health policy commentator concludes in a detailed and scathing analysis of the previous government’s handling of the BSE crisis.

‘The British Government seems constantly to be doing too little, too late,’ argues Robert Maxwell, the departing secretary of the King’s Fund, with the result that it is ‘forced into implementing a policy in which it can be seen to have no confidence, and which has no scientific base’.

In An unplayable hand? BSE, CJD and British Government, Dr Maxwell surveys the response of politicians from the first suspicions of BSE in cattle to the EU ban on British beef exports. His conclusions throw down a challenge to the new government — and to the agricultural lobby.

‘It is time for public opinion and Government policy to insist that food policy is more risk-averse and that the incentives are towards more healthy forms of farming,’ he says. ‘The public will have to pay significantly more for food in future.’

There were 21 known cases of new variant CJD by the end of July 1997.

An unplayable hand? BSE, CJD and British Government. King’s Fund: 0171 307 2400.