ABSTRACT
The BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) crisis of 1996, and subsequent developments, has raised many questions about the way health-related stories are transmitted to the public, the way governments treat citizens in the dissemination of information, and, especially, the trust between governors and governed in the formulation of public policy. Few may be blameless in the events and missed opportunities that led up to the explosion of concern in the media about the safety of meat, which many quite rightly continue to eat with negligible risk to their health. But the biggest culprit is undoubtedly the Government system that allowed BSE to become an issue of huge national and international importance, devastating the lives and livelihoods of thousands of farmers, producers, and sellers. The central irony should not be lost: the system that is skewed so obviously towards the interests of the producers-and more importantly was perceived to be so-was the direct cause of the grief meted out to those very people.
