The BSE crisis of the 1980s-90s caused immense suffering to cattle and humans, but generated lasting lessons about feed safety, agricultural oversight, and the welfare consequences of feeding practices that prioritised economics over animal health.
Individual cattle with BSE experience a profoundly distressing neurological decline. Hypersensitivity to touch, sound, and movement causes fear and agitation in response to normal stimuli. Progressive ataxia leads to falling, difficulty rising, and eventual recumbency. The neurological disintegration of a sentient, previously healthy animal over weeks to months represents severe, irresolvable suffering. The scale of the crisis — over 4 million cattle slaughtered in the UK alone — represents an enormous aggregate welfare cost from a single systemic failure of agricultural oversight. The BSE crisis demonstrates how agricultural practices that compromise animal physiology for economic reasons can cause welfare catastrophes of enormous scale.