ABSTRACT
Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) in British cattle, commonly known as ‘mad cow disease’, is considered by many to have been the greatest disaster in the European food industry in the second half of the twentieth century. As such it presents an enormous challenge at every level of sociocultural organisation: farming and the food industry, science, politics and policy, public health, the media, and last—but by no means least—those at the receiving end, that is, consumers. Yet, despite the enormity of the disaster, BSE would not be on the public agenda had it not been for the media, which transformed this highly complex, intractable issue of scientific and political concern into public news.
