Understanding the Politics of Pandemic Scares: An Introduction to Global Politosomatics by Mika Aaltola

Author:Mika Aaltola [Aaltola, Mika]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781136650116
Goodreads: 17578623
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2011-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The legacy of the BSE drama

The BSE morality drama acted as an evolving guide to respectable behaviour. The EU’s cordoning actions were initially considered inevitable even by the UK government. The apparent political victory achieved by the EU institutions on the BSE issue blended in with other happenings at the time so that the upper hand and initiative gained by the supranational EU was history before it had ever really been gained. The initial positions taken up by each side, which were made more distinct by the proximity of each to the BSE issue, were no longer valid when the focus of politics shifted elsewhere. The agreement reached at the Florence Council meeting on June 21–22, 1996, signalling the disappearance of BSE from the European international scene, was something of an anticlimax to the whole affair, which had been prepared for a more poignant resolution of the hyperbolic public health crisis. At the beginning of the BSE crisis, the general mood was one of a sense of alarm and emergency, which seemed to point at an imminent public health disaster. The awaited disaster failed to materialize in that the whole affair produced only a contestation between the players, which found its clearest expression in the UK’s non-cooperation policy vis-à-vis all EU decision making. This policy seemed to bring things to hang in the balance, causing the initial anxiety over the looming public health crisis to recede into the background. However, the political contestation itself failed to produce anything significant as the attention shifted away from BSE politics to other more usual political issues.

Diseases are reflective of the underlying form of the political community. In this respect, BSE was caused as much by the political situation of the spring of 1996 as it was by the physical disease agent, the prion. This disease morality play had supranational and transnational protagonists. The legitimacy of consumer and public right groups grew after the BSE crisis as did the legitimacy of the European public health authorities. The crisis shaped the underpinnings of the European political space and left a legacy. Sensitivity to health scares has grown after 1996. The associated morality plays provided a recognizable form for political contestation, which has more lately surfaced in relation to food toxins, genetically manipulated food and several different threatening diseases. The sick, jerking, stumbling cows of the UK provided the basic form for an important European morality play. The most lasting legacy of the BSE drama was the way in which the issues ebbed and waned in a matter of months. This same fleeting trajectory has been evident in later pandemic scares such as SARS and avian flu. The BSE crisis demonstrated how a pandemic drama can become a part of high politics. However, it also pointed out the fleeting nature of such dramas. Second, the analysis of the BSE scare exemplified a situation in which the attribution of a disease to one state can lead to an interstate contestation. Third, the BSE drama highlighted the role

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