La crise de la vache folle

March 20, 1996, Palace of Westminster. Stephen Dorrell, UK Minister for Agriculture, addresses the House of Commons. He declares that the prion, the agent responsible for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) or “mad cow disease”, could be transmissible to humans. Ten new cases of young Britons suffering from the fatal Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (CJ) have just been detected. They are thought to have contracted the disease through food, by eating beef. These words are a bombshell. They put an end to ten years of disinformation, silence and lies of omission. Translated with DeepL.com (free version)