Inside— Special one-hundredth issue four page supplement Socialist The market is bad for your health April 6, 1996 5 FF • $1 • 2 DM 1500 lire • 30 BF • f1 THE CRISIS over Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) and its human form -Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (C]D) has produced a complex array of arguments and counter-arguments.
But what is quite clear is that the dangerous chaos is an outcome of Tory It is a product of the "backward" British parliamentary system and a government in the pocket of the food and farming lobby. Twenty eight Tory MPs have interests in farms including junior agriculture minister Tim Boswell.
The problem for these people is not the possibility of a mass epidemic, but the prospect of a drastic loss in profits. The Tories had scrapped controls over the food processing industry and covered up the evidence.
The spread of CjD is the result of this de-regulation. No wonder Europe will not buy the beef.
The Spongiform Encephalopathy Advisory Committee found that BSE may be transmitted to humans. A new strain has been found in a number of young victims.
The disease affects nerve cells in the brain and causes the loss of memory and co-ordination finally ending in death.
Potentially millions of people are at risk. All those who ate beef prior to 1989 (at Or will rake time to know the full extent of the problem. The worst case scenario points to 500,000 deaths per year.
Cows, which are not carnivorous animals, were fed offal made from infected animals to cheapen the cost of production. This led to the sheep's disease scrapie being passed on.
Scientists working on the disease have been silenced and humillated. Richard Lacey who has long campaigned about the risk of BSE jumping species has been subject to a The spread of CJD is the result of deregulation campaign of intimidation. The microbiologist Harash Narang has actually developed a system to accect bot in the unhe of ive beasts. He was rewarded with the sack Even still, Heseltine and Mawhinney tried two-tier meat system.
market be taken. to keep the lid on the latest findings. Nicholas Budgen came up with the idea of a "Customers" could pay more for non-BSE beef, while the working class and poor could do their heads destroyed.
The Tories are scared by the economic fall-out. Two hundred and fifty thousand tonnes of beef were exported last year. Balance of payments could suffer by one and a half billion pounds.
If farmers are given compensation this will up the bill. If all the heard is killed, this could cost up to (20 billion.
In terms of compensations, the workers in the industry should be the first priority. Already 6,000 jobs have been lost.
The Tories are going cap in hand to their friends in the EU. Even a modest plan to kill 15,000 older cows would cost 3 billion. The effect on the PSBR would.be catastrophic. No tax cuts for sure, but also massive spending cuts.
But cows will not be killed because of safety. The government is being forced to act to give reassurances and to prop up the But if BSE is genetically carried, the whole The Labour Party is equally half-hearted in its approach-sacrificing principles before the altar of the free market. Labour fails to seriously challenge the Tories on this question despite the fact that it could have much to gain, starting at Tamworth.
Socialists must demand that the interests ol nealth come before the incerests of pront What ever measures are necessary should Proper money needs to be put into scientific research into BSE and CJD.
The NHS also needs proper funding, not least because of a potential epidemic. Yet under rules just brought in, free long term same oua be conical But these are only stop-fap measures. If the crisis shows anything, it is that capitalism is a sick system. If it is not killing people through poverty and starvation, it is killing them through infection. BSE is just one aspect of a wider problem. If we are to survive as a species, capitalism itself must be
Socialist Outlook 100 • April 6, 1996.