THE SUSPICIONS of many people will, we think, be echoed in the speculation today by top mad cow disease expert, Dr Stephen Dealler, of Burnley, that government scientists were gagged by their political bosses from publicly revealing their concerns long before the alert was eventually announced.

He expects this indictment of the last government to come when the scientists are called to give evidence at the BSE inquiry when it resumes next month.

For, from the start of the beef crisis, the impression that consumers and their concerns have been at the bottom the list of priorities has been vivid.

But it is not just the feeling that the government was more concerned to protect the interests of farmers and the food industry that offends, but also the arrogant inclination of ministers to decide that the public cannot be trusted to make sound judgments itself.

The new government may have gone a good way to reducing the public mistrust by setting up the BSE inquiry to openly seek the truth, but it has soon given way to the we-know-best instinct by refusing the let the public make its own mind up on beef on the bone.

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