Defiance of official warnings tells us a lot about the sceptical mood towards the Government, writes Sarah Carey.
I'M NOT sure Prof James Herron of UCC's biochemical toxicology lab is right. He told this paper on Monday that the Government needed to do more to reassure the public about the pork crisis. Based on a survey of half a dozen households, I can tell you that the public is perfectly reassured. A round of phone calls on Sunday morning revealed a rapidly emerging consensus: what harm could a few sausages do? The pan went on and we defiantly fried our bacon.
In these recessionary times, we weren't going to dispose of perfectly good food. Alright, there's a chance it wasn't exactly perfect, but we still weren't throwing it out. Instead of alarm, my small population sample offered several reasons to ignore government advice - some good and others completely irrational. The conspiracy theories came later.
On the rational side of the house, some measure of calculation was employed. If only 10 per cent of pigs were contaminated, then the chances of us getting the poisoned pork were reasonably small. Not quite as slim as winning the Lotto, but the odds were on our side. In addition, several scientists had been on the radio bright and early to assure us that eating the dioxin-flavoured sausages was a low-risk activity. One said it was the equivalent of linking a few surreptitiously smoked fags behind the bicycle shed at school with lung cancer. We didn't have a bicycle shed at school and had to put plastic bags on the saddles to stop them getting wet, but we got the picture.
As the recall includes all products bought since September 1st, it appears that even if the pork is dangerous, we've been eating it for three months. Surely another few days couldn't make a difference?
Finally, in case anyone thinks that my usual reference group - my slightly warped relations in Enfield - is unreliable, I checked with an over-informed Guardian newspaper-reading friend in south Dublin. Digesting his roast pork and apple sauce dinner on Sunday evening, he said the mood in Monkstown was slightly bitter.
Since they'd be living across the bay from the new incinerator at Poolbeg, they thought they might as well as start on their dioxin intake early. By the way, he wondered, did I know why every rural incinerator had been rejected but they got landed with one? Maybe An Bord Pleanála is populated with culchies? I promised to check it out and rang my West Brit friend to check on her domestic pork policy. She was laughing. The BBC was leading with the news all day. Apparently, the crisis had provided an opportunity for a little BSE revenge and they were relishing our rasher recall.
She was enjoying their schadenfreude and proceeding with her chicken and ham Sunday dinner anyway. Maybe I belong to a bizarre network of swine-eating contrarians, but so far I had yet to talk to anyone who was taking this seriously.
Where were the hysterical consumers? What was behind this cheerful disregard for supposedly poisoned food? Allow me to suggest some theories.
First, we had the classic situation where people assess risk in a counter-intuitive method. Rather than taking into account the statistical probability of disaster, they rely on other factors such as the perceived level of control in the risk equation.
When someone believes themselves, either accurately or not, to be in control of a situation, they will accept a higher degree of risk than when they are not. It's why some people are terrified of flying and yet think nothing of driving even though flying is safe and driving is not.
Once their hands are on the wheel, they'll casually overtake an articulated truck on a double white line with oncoming traffic in heavy fog. A teeny bit of turbulence in an Airbus 330 and suddenly everyone's holding their breath and tensing. It's not the risk - it's the control. Those incinerator dioxins are perceived to be dangerous because we envisage some low-paid Homer Simpson type operative to be all that stands between us and a tumour. But we'll chance a couple of dodgy sausages once we're the ones putting them on the pan. However, the happy defiance of official advice tells us a lot more about the political mood of the country than it does about our equivocation on food safety. Twelve months ago, an instruction by a menacing Brian Cowen to bin our bacon would have met with immediate compliance. Instead, a hastily convened press conference on a weekend is met with open scepticism.
The pork protest shows that the Government has lost the moral authority to govern. You could understand voters refusing to take the Budget on the chin, but if they won't even dump a €4.99 packet of rashers, then it is clear we can expect a rebellious new year. If a noble effort to protect public health is the subject of wilful disobedience, I certainly wouldn't chance another Lisbon for some time.
My pig-eating acquaintances had one final query. What happened to traceability? From supermarkets to sole traders, our butchers claim to be on first-name terms with every animal that crosses their counter. If the feed was confined to 10 farms as we were told, then the Food Safety Authority should have known exactly which brands and stores were supplied with the poisoned pigs. The recall of all the meat was an admission that either they didn't know which farms got the contaminated feed or that traceability is fiction. Either way, someone's telling porkies.