Online videos of crazed deer crashing through the American countryside are racking up views online. They have the deer version of BSE – Chronic Wasting Disease, or CWD - and it's now spread to northern Europe too. Scientists are worried. Histor

9. Cow Eats Man

Oct 23rd, 2023 14m 59s

Did mad cow disease actually come from humans? Alan Colchester, the doctor who raised suspicions about the Kent meat rendering plant, has one of the most disturbing theories so far. He publishes an academic paper that suggests a grisly internat

8. Reaction

Oct 23rd, 2023 14m 53s

Organic farmer Mark Purdey’s followers roll their concerns about pesticides into the public inquiry into BSE. A group of farmers who claim they were poisoned by pesticides join forces with green activists and work to get their own fears about n

7. Factor X

Oct 23rd, 2023 15m 3s

The BSE crisis becomes a lightning rod for other safety issues in the countryside. Organic farmer Mark Purdey becomes convinced pesticides are to blame for making cows go mad, and thinks they caused vCJD in humans too. He sets out to prove his

6. Stray Burger

Oct 23rd, 2023 15m 25s

Mother Christine Lord becomes obsessed with the now infamous episode of agriculture minister John Gummer feeding his daughter a beef burger on TV in 1990. She wants to know what killed her son - and beef is the prime suspect. But as she investi

5. D-Day

Oct 23rd, 2023 14m 37s

The truth finally comes out, as the government confirms a new brain disease affecting humans. In late 1995 eminent neurologist John Collinge is brought onto the government advisory panel on BSE. Cases of a new brain disease in humans are confi

4. Bad News

Oct 23rd, 2023 15m 28s

Christine Lord lost her son Andrew to the human form of BSE - vCJD - in 2007. He was 24 years old. Christine compiles a list of culprits, she says are responsible for Andrew’s death, and publishes them on her website - home to her one-woman cam

3. Dissidents

Oct 23rd, 2023 14m 40s

Dissident researchers are convinced the scientific establishment is wrong on BSE, and one microbiologist is convinced a major human health disaster is imminent. Microbiologist Steve Dealler and his boss, Professor Richard Lacey are veterans of

2. Hypothesis

Oct 23rd, 2023 14m 48s

It’s the mid 1980s and farm vet Colin Whitaker has the ominous realisation that a new disease is emerging in Kent’s cow herds. The Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food knows about it - and is determined to keep a lid on this potentially

1. Zombie Apocalypse

Oct 23rd, 2023 14m 49s

Hidden deep in the heart of the Kent countryside is an abandoned factory with a dark past. In the 1980s and 1990s it processed tens of thousands of dead cows - some of which are thought to have been infected with a disease that would devastate

Introducing The Cows Are Mad

Oct 16th, 2023 2m 52s

The Covid-19 pandemic has been one of the weirdest things any of us has lived through. But there was another sickness that once stalked the nation and turned things very strange for a while.

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