Society, Religion and Technology Project

In the winter of 1996/97 the SRT Project and the Church and Nation Committee of the Church of Scotland consulted with a number of key organisations and individuals to prepare a report to the General Assembly on the results of the BSE/CJD crisis in Scotland. We are grateful to the many who gave their time. This paper gives the main substance of the report. The Assembly passed motions urging the Government to take steps to secure the future of beef industry in Scotland, to press for an early lifting on the export ban, and expressing concern for victims, both human and animal.

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Shock
When the Health Minister made the fateful announcement on March 20 of the new strain of CJD, and of a possible link between it and BSE, the universal experience of everyone involved was of profound shock. Medical and research teams who had worked for years on spongiform diseases were faced with the fact that what had been only a very remote and improbable scientific risk had apparently happened. Farmers, auctioneers, abattoir workers and agricultural advisors, long used to crises like bad harvests, were faced with the possibility that the largest sector in Scottish agriculture might be wiped out overnight, and their livelihoods with it.

A major disaster for Scottish agriculture, with long term concerns for upland farmers
"The recent BSE scare and the resulting consumer and EU reaction amounts to a major disaster for Scottish agriculture." (P. Cook, SAC, Glasgow Herald, 16 May1996) Beef is described as the backbone of Scottish farming, by far the biggest sector, whose £530M represents about 30% of the entire Scottish agricultural output. At every stage of the beef cycle - the upland breeders, the lowland "finishers" who fatten the cattle for slaughter, the auction marts, abattoirs, livestock hauliers and the processing industry - there have been serious losses, sometimes amounting to an entire year's profits, as cattle prices slumped, the market for beef collapsed overnight, and exports were banned.

Substantial compensation has cushioned the blow to most of those most affected in 1996, so that people are not generally in dire straits. There are very serious concerns for 1997 and beyond for the upland cattle breeders. They are highly vulnerable to the eventual consumer demand and price of beef, and do not have the options for diversification into crops or other livestock which enabled many lowland farmers to buffer the impact. Many of these upland rural areas are already economically fragile. It could have a profound effect of the economy of a region like Orkney, for example, whose grass-fed beef is the islands' main source of income, and much of which used to go for export. It is ironic that their very few cases of BSE all came from stock imported from the south.

Partial Recovery
There has been a gradual recovery in beef consumption and prices. By January 1997, overall UK beef demand had recovered by about 70%. Prime cuts are nearly back to normal, mince is down a little, but processed beef demand has halved and is unlikely to recover. Prime beef prices are about 10-20% below those before the crisis, but poorer quality beef which used to go for processing is fetching very low prices. Any substantial recovery of the Scottish beef industry will depend, however, on the UK export ban being lifted. In the long term, it is hoped that Scottish beef could rely on its clean, high quality, grass fed image to capture niche markets, and quality assurance schemes are in place. The future trend in the highly consumer-sensitive parts of the market, like the big supermarket & burger chains, is likely to be towards dedicated groups of beef suppliers attached to one abattoir, with maximum traceability & quality assurance.

Personal Reactions
A variety of reactions was reported to the Committee. Naturally, feelings of personal concern are prominent. One farmer said, "You wonder what it is you've been selling, to make folk ill." We also found a sense of indignation at people wagging fingers at farming, when farmers regard a lot of what has happened as having been outwith their control. For a long time feed suppliers kept secret what "proteins" had been added to a bag of feed, and farmers simply had to trust that it had passed the necessary regulations. Others believed that everyone is implicated to some extent. The imposition of an indiscriminate cull of all cattle at 30 months old was widely seen as doing little or nothing to solve the BSE problem, and has left a widespread sense of anger and frustration. As well as removing cattle from infected herds from the food chain, it is destroying nearly half a million perfectly good cattle, for what is perceived to be mainly an exercise in restoring consumer confidence. Even the slaughtermen feel upset about slaughtering good cattle simply for waste. The more recent selective cull of those 6 month old calves which are likely to have had similar feeding regimes as infected cattle is seen to make more sense, but to have come much too late.

Analysis - a crisis of public confidence and information
Many different opinions were given as to the root causes. A particular concern was over what forces were driving the use of so much protein supplement in the feed, and whether in the long run this was good for either the cattle or the industry. Historically, it arose out of the post-war aim of self-sufficiency in food. With the subsequent downturn in agriculture, however, the pressure to maximise production output has become dominant, and has affected everyone in the business to varying degrees. It was also observed that people are apt to do silly things when their backs are to the wall, and subsidies could lead to strange choices being made. In retrospect one can see indicators which might have raised concern, but it is hard to judge in hindsight over issues which no one was looking for.

BSE represents a classic case of a situation driven by confidence in public information. There is evidently a widespread perception that the Government mishandled both the scientific data and public fears. It has also been recognised that the consumer, ethical and safety side of the agriculture ministry should be separated from its production-oriented responsibilities. Public perception of food safety has now become a key issue. The knowledge that animal products were being used in animal feed came as a revelation to many, but the concerns expressed about it may also have an element of the wisdom of hindsight, since it was not seen as a major ethical issue at the time. The revulsion at feeding an animal with the remains of others of its own species, however, reflects an ethical intuition that something of God's created order was being violated, and that we have ended up paying the price, not only in CJD sufferers but also those whose livelihoods depend on agriculture.

Part of the problem is that links between farmers and consumers have become very distant. Food has become what comes out of packages in the supermarket, not what farmers spend a life on the land to produce. In an increasingly urbanised environment, people are no longer close to the land, nor reminded daily of the connection between what they eat and the what happens in the fields around them. There is also concern that decisions that affect our food habits are far removed from the general public, made by supermarket chains, producers and Government departments. The crisis shows what can happen if the only effective say ordinary people have is in what we choose to buy, or not, off the shelf. With all the regulatory and other measures now in place, there would appear to be no significant risk today from eating prime Scottish beef cuts, but there are concerns that wholesome meals remain available to the poorest in our society. It is said that more people may currently be dying from eating shell fish and nuts than from beef, but it is clear that into the next century the Scottish beef industry will be shaped largely by the varying moods of public risk perception. If the gulf between food production and the public remains as wide as it is, that is inevitable.

The BSE-CJD connection - the jury is still out
There are still large uncertainties about the nature and causes of BSE, its transfer or not to other species, and the cause of the new strain of CJD. Their characteristics are well established, but their mechanisms are peculiarly intractable. There is no good test for either disease without a post-mortem. The long incubation period (5 years in cattle and 10-15 years in humans) followed by a rapid onset, makes study difficult. The most likely explanation for BSE remains that a form of scrapie "jumped species" into cattle, by being fed in contaminated feed to cattle. Within the EU, only the UK has a high level of both sheep and cattle, to have the possibility of a high enough level of cross feeding to create an epidemic, rather than just a few cases.

The new strain of CJD with its possible link to BSE came as a complete surprise to everyone involved. Two years before, most experts would have said it was highly improbable. The theory that it was caused by eating contaminated cattle remains unproven, but a compelling piece of data is that only the UK has a BSE epidemic and only one such CJD case has since been found outside the UK. Key research is continuing. It is apparently very difficult biologically for the active agent to jump species, simply as a result of the process of eating. There is thus some hope that CJD will not turn into an equivalent epidemic to BSE. Because of the long incubation period, however, we will not know for some years yet. Whatever its eventual magnitude, the damage has been done. Families of those who do develop CJD in future will need much support with a distressing and incurable disease, and measures also need to be taken to avoid serious harm to Scotland's upland cattle breeding and their dependent rural communities.

Perhaps just as long-lasting is the damage to the trust in how public information based on science is handled by politicians. One of the central issues to emerge is how we deal with scientific uncertainty, without causing unnecessary scares or making false assurances. This will be one of many issues to be examined in the SRT Project's new study into the ethical, theological and social implications of risks from technology.

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Ref.no. BSEINFO 18/6/97.