Читать книгу Sociology - Anthony Giddens - Страница 228

In 1996, British government ministers admitted that at least ten recent human deaths had been caused by a new variant of Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (vCJD) in humans, which may have developed through people eating beef infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) during the 1980s. This was a huge shock. Millions of people had eaten beef in this period and, at least theoretically, could develop the disease. But how had this happened?

BSE is a fatal neurodegenerative disease of cattle whose symptoms – loss of coordination, nervousness, loss of memory and aggression (hence ‘mad’ cows) – are similar to those of Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD) in human beings. From the experience of sheep farming, it was thought that BSE could not cross the species barrier into the human population. CJD is a recognized but very rare disease in human beings but is unrelated to BSE. The UK BSE inquiry (1998–2000) identified the cause of BSE in cattle as a gene mutation in a single cow (named Cow 133). The most widely accepted explanation for the spread of BSE is that cattle were being fed BSE-infected offal (Macnaghten and Urry 1998: 253–65). The inquiry report said that the problem was ‘the recycling of animal protein in ruminant feed’ and noted that the link between BSE and the human vCJD ‘was now clearly established’. As of 2 November 2015, the National Creutzfeldt–Jakob Disease Surveillance Unit in Edinburgh reported that 177 people had died from vCJD. Meatrendering practices were changed and new rules brought in to prevent a recurrence, but public confidence in science, politics, regulatory bodies and the meat industry were thoroughly shaken by the events.

On the face of it, this seems like an episode of a naturally occurring disease in animals, unrelated to social processes. However, the transmission and spread of BSE was the product of decisions taken within the animal feed production system. The previous assumption that BSE would not cross the species barrier was shown to be wrong. BSE-infected beef did lead to vCJD in humans. Treating cattle as commercial products and denying their herbivorous nature by feeding them dead animals produced an unexpected outcome that no one had forecast.

A critical realist approach would suggest that, to understand this event properly, we need to know what kind of creatures cows are: what are their natural capacities? We also need to understand human beings to know why the disease had such devastating effects on people. What happens when infected foodstuffs find their way into the human body? We also need to know how the food production system operates and what political and economic decisions were made that allowed dead animals to be fed to others. And we need culturally specific knowledge – just why do so many people eat so much beef in the UK?