Food Poisoning, Policy and Politics: Corned Beef and Typhoid in Britain in the 1960s (review)

Over the last four decades food poisoning has been growing in importance in the United Kingdom, and these authors have produced a fascinating, detailed, and articulate study of the subject. David F. Smith and his colleagues set the scene by briefly sketching the historical background of food poisoning and public health in the United Kingdom in the nineteenth century. They see the period between World War II and 1964 as one of the achievement of control over enteric fevers, such that by 1963 typhoid was largely considered a historical disease and there was optimism about food hygiene. Although there had been portents of what could happen with outbreaks of food poisoning in Harlow, South Shields, and Bedford, little had been learned from these. The 1964 typhoid outbreak was caused by imported Argentinian corned beef, which had been cooled in unchlorinated river water. Roughly five hundred people were poisoned with typhoid from this source.

What is particularly nice about this study is the way in which the authors highlight all the complex interactions between the hospitals, Medical Officers of Health (MOH), general practitioners, public health laboratories, and public health authorities that occurred in dealing with the outbreak. There were rivalries and contested boundaries between them, which hindered the containment of the outbreak. Among the crucial policy actors in the affair, MOH McQueen is shown as having been determined and driven in trying to bring the outbreak under control, yet also rather innocent in his dealings with the printed press, which sensationalized the issues involved.

As the outbreak gained publicity and became more extensive, frictions started to emerge—not only between the medically interested organizations involved, but also geographically between London's central government and Aberdeen's local authority. Smith tells us that the U.K. Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries, and Food (MAFF) were slow to respond to the outbreak, and that they had many other factors in addition to public health to consider in their approach to the outbreak. Unsurprisingly, MAFF looked at the economic aspects, as did other government departments worried by the impact that threatening to suspend importation of Argentinian corned beef on public health grounds might have on U.K. exports to Argentina.

These aspects underscore a pervasive issue with which policy makers try to grapple when dealing with matters of public health: What will be the economic impact of the measures they take? This issue is well highlighted by the recent BSE affair in the United Kingdom. Smith shows that in the typhoid outbreak the government had a torturous task in dealing with businesses that had stockpiles of the suspect corned beef on their hands, and the issue of compensation had to be worked out. In addition, inspections of foreign corned beef canning plants had to be undertaken delicately: the British government was loath to upset overseas governments by imposing strict regulations on the processing of any corned beef imported into the United Kingdom, for fear that this would provoke trade retaliation. At the local level, Aberdeen suffered from a quick reduction in tourism to the area after the outbreak became nationally known; after the outbreak, however, it soon recovered through extensive efforts to promote the city by local associations, businesses, and the press.

By the end of the outbreak, such had become its salience that even Prime Minister Harold Macmillan briefly became involved, after questions started to be raised in Parliament. The Milne Committee was appointed to look into the episode, but, as so often with committees, its aim was not only to investigate what went wrong but also to take the political heat out of the issue.

The only criticism this reviewer would have is that the volume lacks a coherent theoretical unity to tie all the issues together—though this is something that the study of food and...