On Tuesday, 19 May 1964, two women students at Aberdeen University were diagnosed as being ill with typhoid fever. The cases marked the beginning of the largest post–World War II outbreak of typhoid in Britain. By the time the epidemic had worked itself out, 469 cases had been confirmed and more than five hundred people hospitalized. The evidence suggested that the infection was food borne, and its origin was determined to be sliced canned corned beef obtained from the cold meat counter of Low's supermarket in Union Street. The Aberdeen outbreak was the fourth within a year to be related to corned beef: similar if less spectacular episodes had occurred in Harlow, South Shields, and Bedford in May, June, and October 1963, respectively. In each, the source was found to be canned corned beef imported form Argentina; in each, the beef had been produced by a factory that used unchlorinated water to cool the sterilized cans. Moreover, it seemed that in Aberdeen the guilty meat had been released for public use as turnover from a government-held stockpile accumulated against the possibility of a nuclear war.

Aberdeen's typhoid outbreak provides the core case study on which Food Poisoning, Policy and Politics is based. Researched and written by an interdisciplinary team at Aberdeen University, the book offers a painstakingly reconstructed, minutely detailed account of the outbreak and of the subsequent political fallout, moving outward from the city itself through central government, a public inquiry, and the intricacies of the international meat trade. Carefully planned, clearly written, and meticulously researched, it offers an intriguing if unedifying insight into the operations, considerations, and negotiations extant in the corridors of British power. The opening theme of typhoid and food poisoning is explored in a chapter on historical background and in three chapters on the various outbreaks, of which two relate to Aberdeen specifically. As the authors note, however, their aim is to provide “insights of potential relevance to matters of current worldwide public, political and medical concern” in relation to food safety (1). Policy and politics, not the history of public health or medicine, are the central issues of concern. As a case study of British government reaction to a popular crisis, and the factors that influence it, this book offers lessons that apply beyond food safety to a broad range of social and political situations.

Core themes of the story emerge successively, and an early entrant is the power of vested interests. The political imperative of cheap food and a better national diet had tied Britain closely into trade relationships with Argentina. In 1950, Argentina supplied 28 percent of total British meat imports and, in return, had become an important market for British manufactured goods. A nexus of British shipping companies and processing and production firms were therefore linked into and dependent on this trade, to the extent that the British tolerated in South America a laxity in matters of animal health unacceptable in, for example, France, despite the continuing endemicity of foot-and-mouth disease there. An amicable relationship with Argentina, and the interests of British traders, strongly influenced the British policy agendas throughout the 1960s. The media was another major player, not surprisingly perhaps, but seen here in a more complex role than is often allocated to it. A key issue was the management of the media in limiting political fallout for both government and commercial interests. The Aberdeen medical officer of health, Ian MacQueen, was a central figure here. He was responsible for monitoring and containing the outbreak, providing information on developments and control measures to citizens and the general public, and advising on the avoidance of infection. In dealing with the media on a damage limitation basis, MacQueen was on a steep learning curve, and he paid a price: the subsequent committee of inquiry, seeking to protect the reputations of the central government agencies and the meat trade, cast him as the scapegoat. The culture of Whitehall, and the way in which ministers and civil servants operated to limit damage to perceived interests, are the crucial themes of the central chapters of the book. An imminent general election brought Conservative politicians into the affair; the desire to diffuse allegations concerning the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Farming's (MAFF) stockpile of corned beef created the committee of inquiry; and MAFF's reactions to the recommendations of the chief medical officer (CMO) were governed by political expediency. At the height of the emergency, MAFF publicly withdrew several batches of canned meat on the CMO's recommendation; once the pressure point was past, it was less concerned to do so. The inquiry committee meanwhile was very much an inside job: chaired by an ex-civil servant, and with a civil servant as secretary, its evaluation of blame was likely to favor political and trade interests at the expense of the local administration.

The complex layering of interests at the heart of government policy lie at the heart of this book, and many lesser issues edge their way onto the stage—civil service secrecy, the professional dignity of veterinarians, the separation of human and animal health problems, and the efficacy of market conditions rather than regulatory measures in improving hygiene standards in Argentina's meat industry. While this case study is illuminating of the workings of British governments in regard to food safety, the conclusions are depressing: there is little evidence that the 1963–64 typhoid outbreaks had any long-term influence on approaches to food safety. Even more discouragingly, the authors conclude that “rarely, if ever, did action follow directly and unproblematically from scientific or technical principles, or suppositions concerning risk, or even evidence of actual food-related disease” (287). Analysis of the lessons derived from the case study is followed by an account of British food safety crises and concerns since 1964. Despite the authors’ expressed hopes for the new (2000) British Food Standards Agency, their final sobering observation (302, n. 117) is of the potential similarities between 1964 and current issues of trade with China and the risks presented by avian influenza.