Beef-eaters will soon get their appetite back

With concerns about cholesterol, BSE and animal welfare, it's not surprising that meat has become unfashionable. People now eat more fish, vegetables, salads, pasta… and less meat.

Reflecting this state of affairs, chefs have moved away from classical dishes with heavy sauces and meats to a lighter, less formal style of cooking. This trend started even before BSE became an issue. "Mad cows" served only to give the British an added reason to change their diets to a so-called healthier style.

Healthy eating now means reducing, or even eliminating, consumption of animal flesh. Is this right? To this degree only: passionate meat-eaters eat too much meat and health-faddists too little for their own good…

When BSE first made headlines in 1989 most people made light of the "latest food scare". As a joke I took out a Lloyd's policy insuring my customers for £1m if they could prove they got BSE from eating a Smollensky steak. It made headline news, generated a mass of light-hearted publicity and all for a premium of just £25, which reflected the insurers' view of the risk at the time. How times have changed!

I was then selling two tonnes of steak a week. Even though people joked about "mad cows", in a far-seeing decision I rapidly broadened my menu away from steak. Lucky I did because, with each successive scare story, steak sales slumped.

The big scare story in March of last year did the greatest damage. People believed there was proof that BSE could be transmitted to humans.

Fortunately, I was selling steak to just 48% of my customers, considerably down from 87% in 1989. On publication of the latest spurious "findings" the percentage slumped to 29%, rising (presumably owing to memory loss) to 45% six months later. It's been two steps backwards, one step forward all the way.

All in all it has been a pretty gloomy picture for the meat industry and for hapless restaurateurs. In despair, some cattle farmers committed suicide, mercifully no restaurateur followed suit.

A fiasco

But who is to blame for this fiasco? I blame the Government for approving the use of contaminated feed, and for grossly mismanaging the ensuing publicity.

But the press has much to answer for, too. Tabloids and broadsheets alike stoked the flames of hysteria by cynically, carelessly and irresponsibly printing "shock, horror" headlines when they should have been encouraging informed debate.

Discounting the possibility of an epidemic in humans, the "mad cow" story has possibly run its course. Scientists now believe the disease in British herds will be eradicated by the millennium. If so, we might just see a resurgence of beef-eating on a massive scale.

We can take heart from the American and Australian experiences. From the mid-1980s to around 1993 steak restaurants in both countries were dying a slow death.

Then, for reasons no one can really be sure of, there was an unprecedented revival in their fortunes, which continues to this day. I suspect it's because, after years of abstinence, people woke up to the fact that they liked, and missed, the taste of beef. Britain will follow the same course, with any luck.

Silver lining

In any cloudy catastrophe it is comforting to search for a silver lining. But it's hard to find the good in this BSE issue when so many people have suffered needlessly, and so many perfectly healthy cattle have been slaughtered to satisfy political imperatives. It will have been worth it only if governments learn the lesson that no one should be allowed to tamper with our food chain without microscopic scientific scrutiny.

But have they learned this lesson? No. Look at genetically engineered food, which could be either the greatest boon to mankind ever, or its ultimate undoing.

Imagine, if you will, the potential devastation if, because of commercial pressures, it is allowed into the food chain unchecked. BSE will look like a picnic by comparison. And what is the Government doing to protect us? Looking the other way, as usual. All I can say is "let us pray".