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WORK TITLE: Have Bacteria Won?
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE: 4/19/1938
WEBSITE:
CITY: Aberdeen, Scotland
STATE:
COUNTRY: United Kingdom
NATIONALITY: British
http://www.abdn.ac.uk/staffnet/profiles/t.h.pennington/ * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugh_Pennington * http://www.abdn.ac.uk/news/3410/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born April 19, 1938, in Edgware, England; married Carolyn Beattie, 1966; children: two daughters.
EDUCATION:St. Thomas’s Hospital Medical School (now King’s College London School of Medicine and Dentistry), M.B.B.S., 1962, Ph.D., 1967.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Academic and bacteriologist. University of Aberdeen, Aberdeen, Scotland, Chair of Bacteriology, beginning 1979, professor emeritus, 2003–. Has worked at University of Wisconsin–Madison and Glasgow Institute of Virology; Campaign for Science and Engineering advisory council member; chair of the Pennington Group, 1996-97; has served on numerous government panels and scientific and medical boards.
MEMBER:Society for General Microbiology (president).
AWARDS:Lister Medal, Society of Chemical Industry, 2009; Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire.
WRITINGS
Has published in numerous academic and medical journals.
SIDELIGHTS
Thomas Hugh Pennington is an academic and bacteriologist. Born on April 19, 1938, in Edgware, England, he completed an M.B.B.S. and a Ph.D. from the St. Thomas’s Hospital Medical School in the 1960s before it became known as King’s College London School of Medicine and Dentistry. After a year at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, he began researching vaccinia, smallpox, and other viruses at the Glasgow Institute of Virology. Pennington was appointed Chair of Bacteriology at the University of Aberdeen in 1979 and remained at the university until 2003, when he was appointed professor emeritus. He also subsequently served as the president of the Society for General Microbiology and as an advisory council member for the Campaign for Science and Engineering.
Pennington’s research largely centered on improving the typing of bacteria and methods used to identify them. He has also worked to improve the methods used to measure the virulence and antibiotic resistance of different types of pathogens, such as Haemophilus influenza, Neisseria meningitidis, Staphylococcus aureus, and Escherichia coli O157:H7, a variant of the bacteria that can cause hemorrhagic diarrhea and other serious symptoms. He has published in a number of academic and medical journals.
Pennington took on a central role during the 1996 Escherichia coli (E. coli) outbreak in Wishaw, Scotland. Scottish government officials hired Pennington, who chaired the Pennington Group in 1996 and 1997, to investigate this outbreak. Their work took on increased urgency when this infection spread to Tayside in early 1997. Subsequent to his work on this outbreak, he collaborated with British, Scottish, and Welsh governments, serving as an expert on various microbiology and food safety concerns, including the Scottish Food Advisory Committee, the World Food Programme Technical Advisory Group, the Broadcasting Council for Scotland, and during the Welsh E. coli outbreak of 2005.
When Food Kills
In 2003 Pennington published When Food Kills: BSE, E. Coli, and Disaster Science. The account uses an outbreak of E. coli 0157 and the appearance of variant Creutzfeld-Jakob disease (CJD) in Britain as a case study to illustrate the dangers and risks we face in how our food is handled and cooked. Mishandling food at any step along the production chain can lead to illnesses or deaths. Indeed, CJD, which is a rare but always fatal neurodegenerative condition, has appeared in countries throughout the world. CJD is thought to be transmitted through exposure to cattle infected with a bovine form of the disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE); it can also be transmitted from human to human.
Pennington focuses his study not only on the statistics of the issue, but also on the story behind how these deaths are even possible in a country with comparatively high levels of hygiene. He delineates how the outbreak spread from person to person, the response of the government and health officials during this spread, and the nature of this kind of risk. He brings greater awareness to how following long-set procedures can increase risks without considering the potential for these food-borne diseases to adapt and also how cross contamination likely occurred in this particular case.
Reviewing the book in M2 Best Books, Ian Sanderson stated: “I enjoyed reading this book and feel that I learned a lot about food scares [and] how they begin as well as the politics and science behind them.” Writing in PLoS Biology, John Krebs commented that “there are important lessons from past failures for all involved in food safety (and in other areas of risk management), and Pennington discusses some of these in his concluding chapters. He emphasises the need to continually review the evidence underpinning risk assessments, to communicate effectively with the media, to ensure that actions to manage risks are effectively implemented and audited.” Krebs appended: “Notably, he refers to the importance of inclusiveness and openness about risk and uncertainty in decision making: ‘If [this] becomes the norm, it will be possible to say that good has come out of tragedy.'”
Have Bacteria Won?
Pennington published Have Bacteria Won? in 2015. Part of the “New Human Frontiers” series, the account ponders the notion that many strains of bacteria and several viruses have evolved to continuously overcome human-engineered treatments for them. Pennington chronicles individual cases where bacteria have acquired resistance to antibiotics, often with the indirect aid of humans. He also discusses the political and policy issues related to dealing with these types of bacteria and their resistant status to antibiotics. Pennington highlights the individuals whose work has led to a greater understanding of this evolutionary process of bacteria. However, Pennington also illustrates how newer treatments for AIDS, more advanced vaccines and antibiotics, and increased public health measures have also helped to curb the spread of these highly-resistant forms of bacteria.
Writing in Choice, R. Adler “recommended” the book, suggesting that it would be appropriate for “all library collections.” Reviewing the book in Inside Higher Ed, Scott McLemee explained that the book “is packed with case histories of outbreaks from the past sixty or seventy years. Each is awful enough in its own right to keep the reader from feeling much comfort at their relative infrequency, and Pennington’s message certainly isn’t that disease can be eradicated. Powerful and usually quite effective techniques exist to prevent or minimize bacterial contamination of food and water, and we now have systematic ways to recognize and treat a wider range of infections than would have been imaginable not that long ago. But systems fail … and bacteria mutate without warning.” In a review in Foreign Affairs, Richard N. Cooper related that “the book offers brief but informative discussions of recent real and not-so-real pandemics.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Choice, June 1, 2016, R. Adler, review of Have Bacteria Won?, p. 1501.
Foreign Affairs, May 1, 2016, Richard N. Cooper, review of Have Bacteria Won?
M2 Best Books, March 15, 2004, Ian Sanderson, review of When Food Kills: BSE, E. Coli, and Disaster Science.
ONLINE
Inside Higher Ed, https://www.insidehighered.com/ (January 20, 2016), Scott McLemee, review of Have Bacteria Won?
PLoS Biology, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/ (April 1, 2004), John Krebs, review of When Food Kills.
University of Aberdeen Website, http://www.abdn.ac.uk/ (June 9, 2017), author profile.*
10 November 2009 RSS twitter facebook
Professor Hugh Pennington gives public lecture
Professor Hugh Pennington
One of Britain’s best known scientists is giving a public lecture this month and being awarded a prestigious honour at the same time.
Professor Hugh Pennington is to receive the Lister Medal of the Society of Chemical Industry at a public lecture he is giving at King’s Conference Centre on Friday, November 20 at 5.30pm.
The Lister Medal is named after Sir Joseph Lister, the British surgeon who first introduced antisepsis - sterile conditions and infection control - into hospital routine. Sir Joseph pioneered the field of bacteriology in the late 19th Century.
The medal was first awarded to Sir Alexander Fleming, who discovered penicillin, in 1944. It has since been awarded a further 14 times to eminent scientists working at the interface of chemistry and medicine.
Professor Pennington, who was Chair of Bacteriology at the University of Aberdeen from 1979 until his retirement with Emeritus status in 2003, will receive the medal after his public lecture.
Learning Lessons is Hard; Making Predictions Difficultis the title of Professor Pennington’s talk which will focus on particular E.coli 0157outbreaks and influenza pandemics and look at how the treatment of these has been influenced by evolution and history.
Professor Russell Howe, Chair of Chemistry from the University of Aberdeen, is chair of the Scotland Section of the Society of Chemical Industry.
He said: “Professor Pennington is a renowned bacteriologist following in the footsteps of Joseph Lister, and as a media spokesperson he embodies the Society’s goals of relating the chemical sciences to industry, medicine, and the general public.
“An expert consultant to government on microbiology and food safety and a frequent public spokesperson on bacterial infection, Professor Pennington is an extremely worthy recipient of the Lister Medal.”
Professor Pennington added: “To receive and award which celebrates one of the truly great medical scientists, and whose first recipient was Sir Alexander Fleming, is a great honour.”
Professor Pennington’s lecture is free and all are welcome to attend.
For more details and to book your free place visit: http://www.abdn.ac.uk/events/details-4688.php
Hugh Pennington
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hugh Pennington
Born April 19, 1938 (age 79)[citation needed]
Nationality British
Institutions University of Aberdeen, University of Wisconsin–Madison, St Thomas's Hospital Medical School
Alma mater St Thomas's Hospital Medical School
Thomas Hugh Pennington, CBE, FRCPath, FRCP (Edin), FMedSci, FRSE (born 19 April 1938 in Edgware, Middlesex) is emeritus professor of bacteriology at the University of Aberdeen, Scotland.[1] Outside academia, he is best known as the chair of the Pennington Group enquiry into the Scottish Escherichia coli outbreak of 1996[2] and as Chairman of the Public Inquiry into the 2005 Outbreak of E. coli O157 in South Wales.
Contents [hide]
1 Early life
2 Academic career
3 Pennington Group enquiry
4 Subsequent public work
5 Personal life
6 See also
7 References
8 External links
Early life[edit]
Pennington was educated at Lancaster Royal Grammar School in Lancashire, England. Pennington obtained his MBBS degree in 1962, and his PhD in 1967, both from St Thomas's Hospital Medical School, which became part of United Medical and Dental Schools of Guy's and St Thomas' Hospitals in 1982, and has been known as King's College London School of Medicine and Dentistry since 2005.
Academic career[edit]
He spent a year at the University of Wisconsin–Madison before moving to the Glasgow Institute of Virology in 1969, where he researched vaccinia, smallpox and other viruses. He was appointed Chair of Bacteriology at the University of Aberdeen in 1979, where he remained until his retirement in 2003.[1] His research focused on improved bacteria typing, or "fingerprinting", methods, and led to new methods for the investigation of virulence and antibiotic resistance in a number of important pathogens including Staphylococcus aureus, Haemophilus influenza, Neisseria meningitides, and Escherichia coli O157:H7. He also wrote on the history of science and medicine such as the introduction of antiseptic surgery to Aberdeen by Alexander Ogston using a Lister 'steam spray producer'.[3] He was dean of the medical school between 1987 and 1992.[1] Pennington was also awarded a higher doctorate, i.e. DSc.
From 2003-6 he was President of the Society for General Microbiology. He is a member of the Advisory Council for the Campaign for Science and Engineering.[4]
Pennington Group enquiry[edit]
In late November 1996, an Escherichia coli outbreak in the town of Wishaw, central Scotland prompted the Scottish Executive to establish an expert group, chaired by Pennington. The Pennington Group convened between December 1996 and March 1997. Another case of E. coli infection occurred in Tayside in January 1997 and the group was tasked with investigating the additional outbreak.[5]
Subsequent public work[edit]
Following his chairmanship of the E. coli enquiry, Pennington has worked for the UK, Scottish and Welsh governments as an expert on microbiology and food safety, and has also appeared in British media as an expert. He was a member of the Scottish Food Advisory Committee,[1] part of the Food Standards Agency, an agency he recommended the government create.[6] He was a founder member of the World Food Programme Technical Advisory Group.[1] He is the former Vice Chair of the Broadcasting Council for Scotland, which advises the BBC.[7]
He has criticised the UK[8] and German[9] governments for their handling of Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) and the NHS for their handling of MRSA.[10] He chaired a 2005 enquiry into a Welsh E. coli outbreak.[11] The 2005 Outbreak of E. coli O157 in South Wales Public Inquiry report was published in March 2009.
In 2003, Pennington published When Food Kills,[12] a popular science book on the topic of BSE, E. coli and public food safety.
He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2013 Birthday Honours for services to microbiology and food hygiene.[13]
Personal life[edit]
He married Carolyn Beattie in 1966 in Maidstone, Kent. They have two daughters.
See also[edit]
1964 Aberdeen typhoid outbreak
Pennington, Hugh: Have bacteria won?
R. Adler
CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries. 53.10 (June 2016): p1501.
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The thesis of Pennington's book is the question posed in the title: have bacteria (and a few viruses) won? There is no question that many bacteria have evolved to becoming insensitive to the most common antibiotics, the methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) being a prime example. Pennington (emer., Univ. of Aberdeen, UK) devotes approximately half of his relatively compact book to instances of how bacteria have evolved resistance to antibiotics, many doing so with aid from society at large, e.g., natural selection of resistant strains due to overuse of antibiotics. The response of public health authorities, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the US, has often been to reduce budgets. The most interesting portions of the book include the many anecdotes illustrating aspects of the author's thesis. Many accounts involve obscure individuals; for example, beyond the expert, who is aware of Theodor Escherich? Some cases are more recent: the post-9/11 anthrax scare and the later Ebola outbreak in Africa. The author finishes on an optimistic note. The combination of public health measures, development of vaccines, and new generations of antibiotics, particularly those targeting viral diseases such as AIDS, has at least brought many of these illnesses under control. Part of the "New Human Frontiers" series. Summing Up: ** Recommended. All library collections.--R. Adler, University of Michigan, Dearborn
REVIEW: When Food Kills
Ian Sanderson
M2 Best Books. (Mar. 15, 2004):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2004 Normans Media Ltd.
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This book is a thought-provoking and in-depth look at a handful of relatively recent food scares in Britain - including the outbreak of E. coli 0157 and the emergence of variant CJD.
What makes this book so interesting is that it doesn't just focus on the statistics of the outbreak and the topology of the disease, bacteria or virus. Instead the reader is told of how the outbreak spread, infected more victims, the politics and official stance at the time as well as other minute details that were small but turned out to be very important. For example, we are told of a time when stew was served to diners after it was heated to a temperature that was capable of killing E. coli yet many of them became infected and some died. The reader is told of all of the facts and made to think about how cross contamination could have occurred.
The author of this book - Hugh Pennington - is the professor of bacteriology at Aberdeen University and also chaired the enquiry into the 1996 E. coli outbreak in Central Scotland. This makes him more than qualified to talk about the subject and also serves to give the reader that they are, at times, seeing whichever food scare that is being documented from an insider's viewpoint. Pennington has clearly researched this book and has picked several good examples of outbreaks that have hit the news in Britain.
After reading this book I was all too aware of how cross contamination and other unclean practices could lead to an outbreak and this, I think, has maybe helped me to follow a more hygienic routine, especially in the kitchen. Throughout the book the reader is informed of practices, such as using the same chopping board or knives to prepare raw meat then cooked meat or using the same can opener, which could easily be overlooked and could result in infection or even death.
CONCLUSION: I enjoyed reading this book and feel that I learned a lot about food scares, how they begin as well as the politics and science behind them. At many times throughout this book I found myself thinking about the many outbreaks that have been experienced in the past and how easily they could begin.
Title: When Food KillsAuthor: Hugh PenningtonPublished by: Oxford University PressISBN: 0-19-852517-6Price: GBP25Reviewer: Ian Sanderson
Germ Warfare
Hugh Pennington's new book, Have Bacteria Won?, goes straight to the heart of a growing public anxiety, writes Scott McLemee.
By Scott McLemee
January 20, 2016
1 COMMENT
Last month came the unwelcome if not downright chilling news that the antibiotic of last resort -- the most powerful infection fighter in the medical arsenal -- is now ineffective against some new bacterial strains. If, like me, you heard that much and decided your nerves were not up to learning a lot more, then this might be a good time to click over to see what else looks interesting in the Views section menu. There’s something to be said for deliberate obliviousness on matters that you can’t control anyway.
Hugh Pennington’s Have Bacteria Won? (Polity) is aimed straight at the heart of a public anxiety that has grown over the past couple of decades. The author, an emeritus professor of bacteriology at the University of Aberdeen, is clearly a busy public figure in the United Kingdom, where he writes and comments frequently on medical news for the media. A number of recent articles in British newspapers call him a “leading food-poisoning expert,” but that is just one of Pennington’s areas of expertise. Besides contributing to the professional literature, he has served on commissions investigating disease outbreaks and writes “medico-legal expert witness reports” (he says in the new book) on a regular basis.
The fear resonating in Pennington’s title dates back to the mid-1990s. Coverage of the Ebola outbreak in Zaire in 1995 seemed to compete for attention with reports of necrotizing fasciitis (better known as “that flesh-eating disease”), which inspired such thought-provoking headlines as “Killer Bug Ate My Face.”
Pennington refers to earlier cases of food contamination that generated much press coverage -- and fair enough. But it was the ghastly pair of hypervirulent infections in the news 20 years ago that really raised the stakes of something else that medical researchers were warning us about: the widespread overuse of antibiotics. It was killing off all but the most resilient disease germs. An inadvertent process of man-made natural selection was underway, and the long-term consequences were potentially catastrophic.
But now for the good news, or the nonapocalyptic news, anyway: Pennington makes a calm assessment of the balance of forces between humanity and bacteria and, without being too Pollyannaish about it, suggests that unpanicked sobriety would be a good attitude for the public to cultivate, as well.
The history of medical advances in the industrialized world has, he argues, had unexpected and easily overlooked side effects. Now we live, on average, longer than our ancestors. But we also die for different reasons, with mortality from infection no longer being high on the list. The website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention makes the point sharply with a couple of charts: apart from a spike during the influenza pandemic following the First World War, death from infectious disease fell in the United States throughout most of the 20th century. Pennington’s point is that we find this trend throughout the modernized world, wherever life expectancy increased. Medical advances, including the development of antibiotics, played a role, but not in isolation. Improved sanitation and increased agricultural output were also part of it.
“There is a pattern common to rich countries,” Pennington notes. “The clinical effects of an infection become much less severe long before specific control measures or successful treatments become available. Their introduction then speeds up the decline, but from a low base. An adequate diet brings this about.”
So death from infectious disease went from being a terrible fate to something practically anomalous within two or three generations. (To repeat, we’re talking about the developed world here: both prosperity and progress impose blinders.) And when serious infectious disease become rare, it also becomes news. “From time to time,” Pennington says, “the media behave like a chief refracting telescope, focusing on an object of interest but magnifying it with a good deal of aberration and fuzziness at the edges because of the poor quality of their lenses.”
Lest anyone think that the competitive shamelessness of the British tabloid press has excessively distorted Pennington’s outlook, keep in mind that CNN once had a banner headline reading, “Ebola: ‘The ISIS of Biological Agents?’” Nor does he demonize the mass media, as such. “Sometimes the journalistic telescope finds hidden things that should be public,” he writes -- giving as an example how a local newspaper identified and publicized an outbreak of infectious colitis at an understaffed and poorly run hospital in Scotland.
Have Bacteria Won? is packed with case histories of outbreaks from the past 60 or 70 years. Each is awful enough in its own right to keep the reader from feeling much comfort at their relative infrequency, and Pennington’s message certainly isn’t that disease can be eradicated. Powerful and usually quite effective techniques exist to prevent or minimize bacterial contamination of food and water, and we now have systematic ways to recognize and treat a wider range of infections than would have been imaginable not that long ago. But systems fail (he mentions several cases of defective pasteurization equipment causing large-scale outbreaks) and bacteria mutate without warning. “Each microbe has its own rules,” Pennington writes. “Evolution has seen to that.”
We enjoy some advantage, given our great big brains, especially now that we have the tools of DNA sequencing and ever-increasing computational power. "This means," Pennington writes, "that tracking microbes, understanding their evolution and finding their weaknesses gets easier, faster and cheaper every day." Given reports that the MCR-1 gene found in antibiotic-impervious bacteria can move easily between micro-organisms, any encouraging word is welcome right about now.
But Pennington's analysis also implies that the world's incredible and even obscene disparities in wealth are another vulnerability. "An adequate diet" for those who don't have it seems like something all that computational power might also be directed toward. Consider it a form of preventative medicine.
Have Bacteria Won?
by Hugh Pennington
Reviewed by Richard N. Cooper
In This Review
High-profile pandemics and the spread of drug-resistant microbes have fueled fears about humanity’s ability to contend with the scourge of viruses and bacteria. But Pennington answers the question posed by his title with a resounding no: the microbes have not “won.” He warns, however, that it would be an error to conclude that they have lost. Humans have made astounding progress during the past century in bringing tiny parasites under control, but the war against them—to use a metaphor the author dislikes—will continue indefinitely, thanks to their collective resilience. Some outbreaks are genuine, but many alleged microbial emergencies are mostly ginned up by the media, which find it expedient to misreport and exaggerate bacterial or viral threats, sometimes out of ignorance, sometimes willfully. The book offers brief but informative discussions of recent real and not-so-real pandemics.
PLoS Biol. 2004 Apr; 2(4): e112.
Published online 2004 Apr 13. doi: 10.1371/journal.pbio.0020112
PMCID: PMC387277
When Food Kills
John Krebs
Copyright and License information ►
For the estimated 800 million people, living largely in developing countries, without enough food to eat, the main food risk is starvation. But if you ask, ‘When does food actually kill?’ in a country such as the United Kingdom, ‘Not that often’ is the short reply you would give after reading Hugh Pennington's book When Food Kills: BSE, E. coli, and Disaster Science. The two food-borne diseases that occupy much of the book, Escherichia coli 0157 and bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), kill humans very rarely, although the ramifications and implications of these few deaths for science, regulators, and government are large.large.
figure pbio.0020112.g001
As Pennington clearly explains, there is still much uncertainty in the science of BSE, and the eventual UK death toll from the human form may be as low as a few hundred, with even the most pessimistic expert assessments putting the upper bound as fewer than 5,000. Food-borne E. coli 0157 kills fewer than a dozen people a year in the UK.
Whilst each death is a terrible tragedy and an indescribably harrowing experience for those close to the victim, these figures are small when compared with other ways in which food kills. Epidemiologists estimate that the dietary contributions to cardiovascular disease and cancer between them kill more than 100,000 people a year in Britain. Yet we hear much more about BSE and E. coli as food risks. For instance, a recent study by the King's Fund (http://www.kingsfund.org.uk/pdf/healthinthenewssummary.pdf) reports that the rate of news coverage in the UK of a death from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the human form of BSE, is nearly 23,000 times that for a death from obesity.
In his characteristically diverting and obscurely erudite way, Pennington describes this discrepancy between public perception and magnitude of risk by referring to an article on railway accidents published in 1859 by one Dionysius Lardner. The systematic and much more revealing analyses of risk perception by psychologists such as Paul Slovic over the past 25 years do not get a mention.
In fact, one of the hallmarks of Pennington's style is his enthusiasm for taking his reader down little-known historical byways. Whether it be the drowning (possibly suicide) of King Ludwig II of Bavaria in the Starnberger See or the treatment of James Norris in Bethlehem Lunatic Asylum in 1814, Pennington has an almost endless supply of anecdotes to provide peripheral colour to his main narrative. Indeed, on some occasions his delight in the detail makes it hard to see where the main narrative is leading, although his aim is to show that similar conclusions can be drawn about risk management in food, transport, oil rigs, and other fields.
Anyone who has heard Hugh Pennington speak will know that he has a remarkably direct and engaging style, which he translates into the written word with verve. Already on page 2, he gets us into the mood by referring to a sample from a five-year-old girl sent for analysis at the start of the Lanarkshire E. coli outbreak of 1996: ‘It was a stool. The word carries the impression of firmness, even of deliberate effort in its production. Hers was not’. His laconic sense of humour is also reflected in many of the wittily irrelevant or tangential photographs. My personal favourites are ‘Her Majesty in Gloves’ on page 44 and ‘Turds on Campsite Track’ on page 101.
The Lanarkshire E. coli 0157 outbreak, which in late 1996 affected 202 people and killed eight, was very much Pennington's show. He chaired the public enquiry that led eventually to a change in the law, requiring all butchers in the UK handling cooked and raw meat to be licensed. The license itself is less important than the training in food safety management principles that precedes it. The butcher John Barr (and his staff), whose shop was the primary source of the outbreak, apparently did not know that you have to keep raw meat and ready-to-eat products separate to avoid cross-contamination with dangerous pathogens, such as E. coli 0157, that can occur in raw meat. Pennington's authoritative and blow-by-blow account shows failings not only in the butcher (who was, incidentally, Scottish Master Butcher of the Year in 1996), but also in the inspectors who had visited his shop eight times in the previous two years. They had not, apparently, picked up that Barr and his staff employed the same knives for cutting up raw and cooked meat, nor that they used a ‘biodegradable’ cleaning fluid, not realising that this is not the same as ‘biocidal’.
The second theme, BSE, is given somewhat shorter treatment. Nevertheless, Pennington goes into some detail in assessing the prion theory of transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (he argues that a nucleic acid is not also involved). He also reviews the sequence of events that led the UK government in the early 1990s to conclude that there was not likely to be a risk to human health and to be slow to change its view. This and the concluding part of the book (see below) draw heavily on the Phillips Enquiry into BSE. Although this enquiry focussed on the response of the UK government, its lessons are relevant to other countries where BSE has emerged in recent years, including many European countries, Japan, Canada, and the United States.
In his book Mountains of the Mind, Robert Macfarlane writes: ‘[F]or the hunter risk wasn't optional—it came with the job. I sought risk out, however. I courted, in fact paid for it. This is the great shift which has taken place in the history of risk…. [I]t became a commodity’. Pennington reflects a similar shift in attitude to food risk over the past half century or so. Back in 1938, although it was known that over 2,500 people a year in Britain died from drinking raw milk, the risk was not seen as large enough to warrant legislation to make pasteurisation compulsory. We are now used to much higher standards of food safety, and we can, as a society, enjoy the luxury of fear of relatively minor risks.
Nevertheless, there are important lessons from past failures for all involved in food safety (and in other areas of risk management), and Pennington discusses some of these in his concluding chapters. He emphasises the need to continually review the evidence underpinning risk assessments, to communicate effectively with the media, to ensure that actions to manage risks are effectively implemented and audited. Notably, he refers to the importance of inclusiveness and openness about risk and uncertainty in decision-making: ‘[I]f [this] becomes the norm, it will be possible to say that good has come out of tragedy’.
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Footnotes
Sir John Krebs is a Royal Society Research Professor in the Department of Zoology at the University of Oxford in Oxford, United Kingdom. E-mail: ku.ca.xo.ygolooz@sberK .nhoJ
Book Reviewed
Pennington TH (2003) When food kills: BSE, E. coli, and disaster science. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 240 pp. ISBN (hardcover) 0-198-52517-6. US$39.50.