Conceptual Links between Two Mad Cow Crises: The Absence of Paradigmatic Change and Policymaking Implications

摘要

On March 20, 1996, a day known as Black Wednesday to the British beef industry,the British Secretary of State of Health announced that a possible link existedbetween BSE and the Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), the human variant of madcow. Seven years later, a somewhat comparable fate struck the Canadian beefindustry. In May 2003, the discovery of the first native North American case of BSEin Canada deflated the prospects of the industry across the country, consequentlycreating environmental uncertainty. This paper conceptually analyses the eventsthat occurred in Britain by considering the beef industry as a political economy. Theauthors find that socio-political structures, driven by power and dependencyrelations, socio-political processes, and driven by cooperation and conflicts within amarketing channel greatly influenced channel members’ behaviors during thiscrisis. In addition, even though some changes were made, the authors believe that,based on the conceptual analysis of the first year following this critical event,Canadian beef industry leaders and government alike did not learn sufficientlyfrom the unfortunate events that occurred in Britain in 1996, even if somestakeholders believed that they had.