BSE

The BSE Inquiry (widely known as the Phillips Inquiry) was established to investigate the emergence of Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE, or "Mad Cow Disease") in cattle and its transmissible human variant, variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD). The crisis began in the 1980s when intensive farming practices—specifically the recycling of animal protein in ruminant feed—led to an epidemic in British livestock.

The inquiry concluded that the primary cause of the BSE outbreak was the feeding of meat and bone meal (MBM) containing infected remains back to cows. The most damning findings, however, related to the Government's communication strategy. For years, Ministers and officials (most famously Agriculture Minister John Gummer, who fed his daughter a burger on camera) insisted that British beef was "perfectly safe." The inquiry found that this "sedation" of the public was a mistake; it wasn't that officials knew beef was dangerous and lied, but that they allowed their belief that the risk was remote to override a precautionary approach.

The report identified significant "Procedural Drift" within the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (MAFF). Scientific advice was often filtered, and there was an unacceptable delay in implementing the 1989 "Specified Offal Ban," which was meant to keep high-risk tissues out of the human food chain. The inquiry noted that when the link between BSE and vCJD was finally admitted in March 1996, the public felt a profound sense of betrayal. The legacy of the Phillips Inquiry led directly to the abolition of MAFF and the creation of the Food Standards Agency (FSA), designed to separate food safety from agricultural promotion.