Civil servants and former British government ministers repeatedly misled the public over the risk posed by BSE to humans, according to the official BSE inquiry report published in London yesterday.
Poor communication between government departments, unacceptable bureaucracy at the heart of government and a failure to enforce precautionary animal and human health measures all contributed to a "national tragedy" that has killed 80 of the 85 people who have contracted variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD), the human form of BSE.
The British government immediately announced an initial £1 million payment to "kick-start" a national fund for the care of victims and a separate compensation package for the families of those who have died will also be established. In reality, these are set to become multi-million pound compensation packages.
In response to more than 167 recommendations contained in the 4,000-page report, the Agriculture Minister, Mr Nick Brown, announced a civil service commissioner would lead a review examining whether any of the officials criticised should face disciplinary action.
Shadow agriculture spokesman Mr Tim Yeo, whose party was in power when the BSE crisis broke in a west Sussex farm in 1986, made a public apology to the victims of vCJD and their families. Responding to the report in the House of Commons, he said: "I am truly sorry for what has happened and I apologise."
After nearly two years of public hearings and investigation, the BSE inquiry, headed by the Master of the Rolls, Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, found that the Conservative government and civil servants misled the public about the threat to human health posed by BSE.
The Tory government "did not lie to the public" about BSE but it ignored growing scientific concerns about the threat to public health because it was "preoccupied" with preventing alarm, it believed the risk was remote, and repeatedly reassured the public it was safe to eat beef without explaining the possibility that BSE could be transmitted to humans.
The campaign of reassurance, with the Conservative government appearing to "sedate" the public as to the possible threat to human health, was "a mistake", the report said.
Apart from "shortcomings" within government, one of Lord Phillips's significant conclusions was that the origin of BSE, which was thought to have surfaced in the 1980s, was likely to have been a spontaneous genetic mutation in cattle, or sheep, that probably occurred in the 1970s. As a result, the government will commission an independent assessment of current scientific understanding of BSE.
Lord Phillips insisted that anyone looking for "villains" or "scapegoats" in the report would be disappointed and most criticism was reserved for the system of government rather than individuals.
Nonetheless, the report contains an appendix of high-ranking civil servants and Conservative government ministers, including the former chief medical officer, Sir Donald Acheson, former chief veterinary officer, Mr Keith Meldrum, and former Health Secretary, Mr Kenneth Clarke, who have been singled out for criticism. The report said they were "most active" in addressing concerns about BSE, but were often "misguided", played down the risk to public health and failed to appreciate and investigate shifting scientific opinion during the 1980s about the risk of BSE transmission.
The report also criticised an embargo on information about BSE by the State Veterinary Service in 1987, following identification of the first case in cattle a year earlier. Alarm bells should have been sounded, the report suggested, when in May 1990 a cat was diagnosed with a "scrapie-like" spongiform encephalopathy. But it was not until 1996 that the government announced it was likely that BSE had been transmitted to humans.
The BSE report can be read at: www.maff.org.uk