The mad cow disease Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 6500 words

The mad cow disease - Research Paper Example It was further determined that vCJD was caused when the individual was exposed to BSE (Collinge, 1997). Mad cow disease eventually resulted in significant financial loss to farmers as approximately 5 million cows were killed in Europe to prevent the spread of BSE. In the meantime, 150 deaths were linked to BSE (Robinson, 2005). Other measures taken were the ban on MBM feed although it was not uniformly enforced across Britain (Stevenson, Morris, Lawson, et al., 2005). It therefore appears that mad cow disease was inadequately regulated amidst significant uncertainties, risk to life and health and the financial losses to farmers. Prior to the emergence of information that human who had consumed contaminated meat had succumbed to vCJD, the government had been adamant that British beef was safe to consume (Millstone & Zwanenberg, 2002). The public was said to be left to self-regulate and in this meant assessing the risks for themselves (Jasanoff, 1997). The BSE scare exposed the weaknesses of national food safety laws which were primarily regulated on an ad hoc basis (Vos, 2000). In this regard, the EU implemented a framework for institutional reform for the regulation of food safety across the EU. National governments also reformed the way in which they gathered and publicized information about food safety (Millstone & Zwanenberg, 2002). The purpose of this research study is to identify how mad cow disease is and should be regulated. This research study therefore examines the national laws of countries effected by the mad cow disease during the scare and the emerging laws developed by various countries in response to the mad cow disease scare. In order to determine whether the laws as they are now, compared to how they were during the scare are adequate, it is necessary to establish the historical and clinical facts surrounding mad cow disease and the scare. If the law is