A lot of political angst could have been avoided by announcing it one week earlier

A lot of political angst could have been avoided by announcing it one week earlier.. And all beef cattle over 30 months old – about 700,000 in total – should be culled. Since there is virtually no evidence of cows younger than that getting BSE, this would effectively have solved the problem. The total cost of this policy would have been pounds 1.6bn in the first year, up to a half of which would probably have been wrung out of the EU, and much of the rest could have been found in the Treasury’s contingency reserve. First, dairy cows reaching the end of their working lives – about 800,000 per year – should be incinerated instead of being sold for animal feed. While previous measures had represented a sensible response to earlier information, new steps were now needed to ensure that no BSE infected meat could possibly get into the human or animal food chain.In particular, this would involve two specific new measures.

The EU complained that Britain was trying to make other countries pay the costs of its unsafe farm practices over the previous decade. The cattle, contemplating an extension to their life expectancy, were the only interest group obviously delighted by a “no culling” policy.So what should have been done? Faced with the new information from the scientists, but in the absence of clear scientific advice on how to proceed, the Government should have announced that this was a new situation which required a “belt and braces” approach to policy. (As far as I am aware, no one has so far suggested that we should compensate kebab shops for giving their customers salmonella.) But, in reality, no government seems able to incur the political wrath of the farmers, so this was a non starter.Nevertheless, the “no culling” policy adopted early last week necessarily involved off-loading the costs on to the farmer. The market collapsed, but the beef could not be sold into the EU’s intervention stock, since it had been deemed unsafe for human consumption Farmers concluded that they had been left holding the baby. Consumers, meanwhile, felt that the Government was taking risks with their health in order to save money for pre- election tax cuts. None of these groups was likely to be a happy volunteer.In strict logic, it might have been thought that the farmers should incur the costs, since they were the ones that were feeding potentially unsafe food to the consumer.

What was really needed was new action which would recognise the new situation and genuinely decrease the chances of BSE infecting humans. Eventually, in the latter stages of last week, a sensible package seemed to be emerging in talks between the UK and the European Commission.While it was making up its mind what to do, the Government risked annoying almost everybody at one time or another. From the outset, there were only three candidates for incurring the costs of the BSE accident – the farmers, the UK taxpayer (usually known as “the Government”), and the EU. But it was hard to see how this could restore confidence to the beef consumer, since unnecessary action can, by definition, have no effect on the safety of eating beef. Next day, the Cabinet decided that no further slaughtering was necessary, and hinted that anyone who recommended such a course was showing the symptoms of eating too much infected offal. Two days later, the Prime Minister announced that further slaughtering would occur, not for scientific reasons but as a response to “market hysteria”.The implication was that the Government would now take action that it considered entirely unnecessary, just to get mad cows off the front pages. The Government started by claiming there was no need for any important new measures, since all the necessary action had been taken years before.