‘Mad Cows and Englishmen'

‘Mad cows and Englishmen’ ¹ was a pun used in a number of headlines on the British ‘mad cow disease’ crisis of 1996. It was a phrase used mainly, but not exclusively, in the context of stories about British nationalism and/or relations between Britain and Europe following the ensuing European ban on British beef exports. ² In this chapter, we argue that the phrase could aptly summarise the gendered character of much of the British national press coverage of the crisis. As we will demonstrate, on the one hand, the Labour shadow health minister – Harriet Harman – was characterised in some newspapers as hysterical, as effectively a ‘mad cow’. On the other hand, public and political reaction was often represented as an attack on the natural appetites and pleasures of Englishmen, not just in terms of national identity but also masculinity. Overall a significant number of articles covering mad cow disease were addressed to the ‘housewife’, a mode of address which had characterised earlier news coverage of food health issues (Fowler 1991; Irwin 1995: 53). ³