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In the 1980s and 1990s, the UK outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) in cattle, and the subsequent human cases of a then novel variant of Cruetzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) linked to the bovine disease, led to some of the defining political moments of the time and large-scale reassessment of agricultural practices and food safety. From the then Agriculture Minister, John Gummer, giving his daughter a hamburger to reassure the nation that British beef was safe in 1990, to the mass slaughter of over 4 million cattle to contain the BSE epidemic, images from the period still resonate in the country's consciousness. Given the lingering shadow of the BSE and vCJD outbreaks, the news, as reported by David Holmes in this month's Newsdesk, that so far in 2012 not a single case of the human disease has been reported in the UK is particularly welcome. 2012 looks like being the first year since 1995 without a reported case.
