Many thoughtful readers, responding to my Mises.org article “Mad Socialism Disease”, have pointed out that there is not much good science out there that supports the belief that anyone has died in Brtain due to Mad Cow, and that the widely held belief that this is the case is based on bad science and bad journalism. Writes Tony Baxendale: I am in the UK meat trade, www.billfields.co.uk is one of my companies.
As far as I am aware, there is no link between CJD which effects 1 in one million people in any given population and New Variant CDJ, which under a microscope looks similar to MCD. No link has ever been established as far as I am aware, it is supposition.
You say 145 people died of MCD is the UK, this is wrong, they died of CJD and New Variant CJD, as I said in the above , in any given population of human beings, this occurs to 1 in a million people. In the USA this is the case, in Mongolia this is the case. When people in Mongolia were dieing of CJD in the 1990’s were we to assume that they must have been flying over to the UK to eat infected MacDonald’s?
Our industry was destroyed on the back of no evidence. In your country today, you will now go through this process.
Many people made lots of money from this. I remember some abattoir owners who were doing the government ordered cull earning 1000% more money per head of cattle for killing that if they killed cattle for the human food chain because the government panicked and the bureaucrat got his zero’s in the wrong place, they were only supposed to earn 100% more.
The only people to die 100% because of MCD were the poor farmers who saw their livestock and livelihoods taken away from them and so decided to get their shotguns and look down the barrel and pull the trigger. That , though, of course is never reported.
Also, Dr. Helen Szamuely wrote:
Your piece on the ramifications of what one cow having BSE can do to the economy is extremely pertinent. May I, as someone who has watched the madness in the UK and has been marginally involved in the fall-out (as a political writer, researcher and campaigner rather than farmer), correct you on one thing? The connection between BSE and vCJD is not “well known” and it is not sensible to repeat that. The death rate on your own figures is too low for any conclusions to be drawn. A number of those who contracted the disease and, even, died, had not consumed diseased beef, as they were vegetarians or had a horror of eating beef. There are several reasons why that particular canard has been repeated in this country, most, you will not be surprised to learn, to do with various vested interests, particularly servants of the state. But the whole BSE fiasco in the UK still needs to be investigated.
Thanks to all for the clarifications. One point should stand out here: The State does not require good science to justify its growth.
