Mad Cow Disease

I see Mad Cow Disease has moved back into the news.   Not in the way I am waiting for – but in a call for coroners to check for the infection when they are poking about in dead people’s brains. 

Apparently, despite the government wanting them to look for something they hope is not there – those cheeky coroners have decided they are not going to carry the can on this one.

 

It’s a strange beast, Mad Cow Disease.  Back in the 1980s, the hysterical media were quick to show us the one and only film they seem to have of a staggering, slightly loopy looking cow – and breathlessly telling us we were all going to die.  Then John Gummer, the then agriculture minister somewhat callously shoved a burger in his daughter’s face, she didn’t drop down dead and it all went away.

 

Until now.  When we are again being told that millions could be carrying the disease… but hey we don’t know it.  Which seems all well and good to me.  The time to worry is surely when we start to dribble and fart a lot and eat grass with a slightly manic look on our bovine faces.

 

Except I understand that there has been an increase in vegetarianism in recent years.  Worse still is the huge increase in mental illness such as dementia.  That really is increasing at an exponential rate.

 

So far, despite everybody in the country having eaten dozens if not hundreds of hideous burgers made from whatever vaguely meaty part of a cow can be rendered down into gristle – only 164 people have dies from the disease since the 1980s.

 

Surely that should put it rather low in our public consciousness behind say sending our soldiers to die in hot dusty faraway places for no good reason – or addressing the annual carnage on our roads.  But no… Mad Cow Disease has popped back into our lives.

 

It’s enough to make you mad.