Media: corprophagia in the media
Monday 1 July 2013
 "Diseased meat from cows with TB secretly sold for burgers and pies by the Government", blares this excuse for a newspaper on its front-page story. "In a shocking new public health scare", it goes on to say, "it was revealed today the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has been flogging off beef that has tested positive for bovine tuberculosis for human consumption". This is all so secret, of course, that it has only ever before been "revealed" in a government publication issued to farmers in 2007, and available freely on the internet (below). 
Despite the official statement and the EFSA report (261 pages) attesting that there is no measurable risk from TB in meat, the paper manages to dredge up a medic to bolster its scare, telling us of Dr Martin Wiselka, an "expert" in infectious diseases at University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust. He says: "I'm a bit surprised as I thought infected cattle were removed from the food chain".
This quite deliberate attempt to stoke up a food scare epitomises the very worst in journalism, and it also typifies the corprophagic habits of the media where, when newspaper runs the story, others wade in without making any attempts to check the story or project the facts. We don't always achieve perfection, and even the best of us can write tosh, but there is no excuse this garbage. As, we wrote earlier, this sort of gutter journalism is akin to shouting "fire" in a crowded cinema just for the fun of it. It is grossly irresponsible. The worst of it is, though. that there are still many people who believe what they get from the newspapers and broadcast media. We see this in the blogs, the online comments on newspaper website, and from general discussion. But when you see this sort of thing, it should remind one that you need to pass everything you read through a scepticism filter. Increasingly, it seems, much of what we read is distorted or spun. Sadly, therefore, nothing can be or should be trusted. The media is a web of lies in which the occasional truth is buried. Thus, using the media is like panning for gold – sorting the occasional nugget from the mountain of dross. And of this we need to keep reminding ourselves. COMMENT: "RACE TO THE BOTTOM" THREAD Richard North 01/07/2013 |
Media: race to the bottom
Monday 1 July 2013
 When newspapers start coming up with headlines such as "Thousands of TB cows sold as food", as has done the Sunday Times (paywall) – in an obvious attempt to stoke up a food scare - you do seriously have to wonder whether they can sink any lower.Of course, having been in the business as a qualified meat inspector, with extensive knowledge of slaughterhouse and meat inspection regulation, it is easy for me to be dismissive. But it is a fact that the modern meat inspection regulations (from 1963 in the UK) were designed around the detection of TB. The system is primarily intended to find the disease in cattle. Furthermore, TB reactors have been going through the system for decades. This is not secret – the procedure has not changed in living memory and anyone who wanted to know could very easily have found out, if they didn't know already. It was detailed in thisexplanatory pamphlet available from Defra before 2008, which was also picked up by the animal rights group, Viva in June 2009. As to the possible risk to man, zoonotic TB is primarily aerosol-borne so it is mainly passed from an actively shedding case via the nasal route, though direct contact with another. However, it is a food-borne disease and has been passed via milk – hence the requirement (except under certain circumstances) for the pasteurisation of milk. When it comes to spread via meat though, as recently as this week, the European Food Safety Authority delivered a massive report "(261 pages) on the public health hazards to be covered by inspection of meat (bovine animals) ". This is part of a fundamental, root and branch evaluation of the EU's meat inspection regulation – which applies throughout the EU, including UK slaughterhouses. And, addressing the specific risk of bovine meat-borne transmission of TB, it reported that there was "no evidence", throughout the entire EU, of any disease passed via meat. Returning to the meat inspection issue, one of the reasons why the system is under review is precisely because it is designed to search for and detect TB. But the intrusive system involved, requiring multiple knife cuts, and handling, is known to introduce contamination into the meat and spread organisms such as E. Coli, Salmonella and Listeria. Solving one problem creates many more. Nevertheless, transmission of TB via meat is a non-problem. To present it as if it was a significant problem, as was clearly the intent of the Sunday Times, is gutter journalism at its very worst. Akin to shouting "fire" in a crowded cinema just for the fun of it, this is grossly irresponsible. Defra goes further, and calls it "irresponsible scaremongering". For once, it is right. However, this paper is not on its own. The Sunday Express is running a similar story, while the derivatives, such as Channel 4 News, the Independent and the Daily Mail have also piled in with the story. Where there is a real risk of transmission, though, is from domestic cats, as reported by the Sunday Telegraph yesterday. And while there are no cases throughout the EU of zoonotic TB transmission from meat, we are aware of eight people in one southern county alone who are currently undergoing treatment, having been in context with infected cats, some owned by a very famous person indeed. To find out such details is clearly beyond the Sunday Times. Crawling out of the gutter, its output yesterday symbolises much that is wrong with the contemporary media. Yet said Lord Justice Leveson, mainstream journalists have "a powerful reputation for accuracy".
As Dellers, might have said, though, every word produced by the ST on this story is "total, abject, weapons-grade toss".
COMMENT THREAD Richard North 01/07/2013 |
Monday 1 July 2013
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