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Indeterminacy in-decisions – science, policy and politicsin the BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) crisisJournal ItemHow to cite:

Hinchliffe, Steve (2001). Indeterminacy in-decisions – science, policy and politics in the BSE (Bovine SpongiformEncephalopathy) crisis. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 26(2) pp. 182–204.

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Indeterminacy in-decisions – science,policy and politics in the BSE (BovineSpongiform Encephalopathy) crisis

Steve Hinchliffe

Increasingly, non-human geographies have unfastened nature from its foundationalmoorings. In a parallel development, the benefits of adhering to precautionary andparticipatory forms of decision-making have become common place inenvironmental geography and in government policy. And yet, on closer inspection,there is a danger in these latter approaches that old certainties regarding non-humannatures remain unquestioned. The result can be a tendency to gravitate towardsbureaucratic and technical solutions to, or closures on, what are, first and foremost,political and open-ended problems. This paper uses an empirical engagement withBSE-related scientific and policy practices, along with insights from non-humangeographies, science studies and poststructuralism to suggest that such certaintiesand resolutions are misplaced.

keywords: uncertainty, BSE, environmental geography, decision-making,precautionary principle, actor network theory

Geography Discipline, Faculty of Social Sciences, Open University, Milton Keynes MK7 6AAEmail: s.j.hinchliffe@open.ac.uk

revised manuscript received ????

Introduction

Increasingly, geographers are developing under-standings of human-nonhuman relations whichemphasize their mutability and their contestablestatus (see Anderson 1995, Braun and Castree 1998,Whatmore and Thorne 1999, Wilbert 2000). Thiswork, which notably engages with literatures infeminist science studies (Haraway 1991 1997) andsociology (Latour 1987 1999), brings into focus the’unnatural’ quality of a strictly ’human’ geography(see Murdoch 1997; Wolch and Emel 1998;Whatmore 1999a). The result has been a willing-ness to discuss ’nature’ issues, not as matters thatlie outside our societies and that need to bebrought into the fold, nor as matters that arealready thoroughly cultural, but as living relationswith all their differences, discontinuities andentangled formations (Whatmore 1997; Hinchliffe2000a). Meanwhile, as concern grows over a raft of

possibly unprecedented environmental changes,over ’new’ genetic technologies and over a range ofenvironment-related food and health issues, thereis new impetus to develop our understanding ofbio-geographies (see also Whatmore 1999b; Castree1999).

The implications of this work for environmentalpolitics and policy have been and continue to bematters for debate and experimentation. And yet,despite the work of Wynne (1992, 1996, 1997),Darier et al (1999) and Burgess et al (2000), atendency remains in government departments andin some policy-relevant academic writing to treatnature and environment as matters of fixed iden-tity. The result, which is well illustrated in the BSEcase, is that there is little or no consideration of theextent to which nature can be known. Instead, thetask of government and of environmental policy-makers seems only to make sure that the bestrepresentation of nature is made available at thetime of making a decision (with any failure to do so

Trans Inst Br Geogr NS 25 000–000 2001ISSN 0020–2754 © Royal Geographical Society (with The Institute of British Geographers) 2001

being a result of underdeveloped science or ofpolitical failings). Once represented, the immutableand incontestable character of a natural entity willform the basis for a consensual approach todecision-making (for a version of this approach toenvironmental politics, which is central to thepolitics of the Third Way, see Giddens 1998). In thispaper I demonstrate that the failure to take up thelessons from environmental geographies has hadand continues to have serious consequences. I willargue that the BSE crisis was in part the result of afailure to acknowledge the mutable and contestednature of the disease. Furthermore, this overstatingof the degree to which the uncertainties surround-ing human-nonhuman relations can be reduced infuture remains a common feature of public policy.Indeed, the BSE Inquiry and its final report tendedto reproduce this sense of determinate uncertainty.In short, the contested politics and geographies ofhuman-nonhuman relations continue to be down-played.

The background to this paper is a partial engage-ment with the British Government’s BSE Inquiry(held in 1998 and 1999, and which reported toMinisters in October 2000). One immediately obvi-ous impression of the inquiry was the almost totalabsence of what would normally be recognized associal scientists from the Inquiry team or indeedfrom the list of those who gave evidence.1 This isnot to say that social science issues were absentfrom the evidence or from the analyses of theInquiry. But it is worth noting that the approachtaken was somewhat different to current themes incontemporary geography and the social sciencesmore generally. It is a conviction in writing thispaper that there are concepts and approaches cur-rent within geography and the social sciences thatwould have been relevant to the Inquiry (seeStengers 1997 for a useful definition of ’relevance’).I include in this respect current understandingsof openness and indeterminacy (Wynne 1992;Mazis 1999; Deleuze and Guattari 1994; Massey1999b), relationality and materiality (Latour 1999;Whatmore 1999a; Hetherington and Lee 2000) anddialogical and political conduct (Shotter 1993;Rydin 1999; Mouffe 2000; Hinchliffe 2000a; Thriftand Dewsbury 2000; Holloway and Kneale 2000).Each of these understandings can, I will argue,offer important insights into the production of BSE,and by extension other environmental, science andof course food-related, crises. In demonstrating thepotential importance of these works to a major

public policy issue, this paper also adds to debatesin geography over the policy relevance of geo-graphical work and methods (see Martin 1999 2001and Amin and Thrift 2000). Contrary to Martin(2001), I aim to demonstrate that the geographical’postmodern and cultural turns’ offer significantpotential for re-engagement with political andpolicy practices.

In focusing upon indeterminacy, materialitiesand conduct, the paper also engages with thevariety of works that are subsumed under thelabels ‘actor-network theory’ (ANT) and ‘feministstudies of science’ and the recent encountersbetween the former and post-structuralist philoso-phies (see Hetherington and Law (2000 for areview). The approach taken is both informed bythese debates and modestly marks an attempt totake some issues forward through its empiricalinterest in the science and policy of BSE. Inparticular I adopt Rheinberger’s (1997) notion of‘epistemic things’ and Mazis’ (1999) notion of a‘knowing of indeterminacy’ to operationalize fur-ther the potentially fruitful relationship betweenANT and post-structuralism.

Finally, there is a concern here with the nature ofparticipation and democratic politics as it is con-structed within geography and in particular withinenvironmental debate. There has been a tendencyto assume that wider forms of public participationand broader deliberation in science and environ-mental controversies will automatically generatebetter policy decisions. Whilst it is fair to say thatin certain situations a broader constituency is evi-dently warranted, the elevation of deliberative andparticipative democracy to a general rule riskslosing sight of the power relations, antagonismsand exclusions that make such forms of democracypossible (Mouffe 2000). In this paper I use theexample of the conduct of BSE decisions to dem-onstrate the importance of considering the style ofdemocracy as well as its constitutive elements.

After introducing, in the next section, debatesover the proper conduct of environmental andscience decision-making, I develop two case stud-ies of BSE decisions in action. The first focusesupon the laboratory science that was drawn uponin policy debates to inform approaches to thedisease. The second takes a particular set of events,as they were mediated by the BSE Inquiry, whenpolicy responses to the recognized onset of BSEwere being debated. Both accounts share a concernwith what is involved in taking a decision, and what

Steve Hinchliffe2

such decisions produce in their wake. Finally, inplacing these two decision-making situations nextto one another, I hope to demonstrate that ’whatwent wrong’ in the BSE case was not simply ’goodscience’, which was let down by ’bad policy’ (anincreasingly prevalent reading of the official BSEInquiry, or Phillips, report). Rather, there was acombined failure to translate a ’knowing of inde-terminacy’, or a geographical understanding ofsocial and natural difference, into suitable actions.

1. Open science and policy?

In 1997, the British government’s Chief ScientificAdvisor, Robert May, drafted a paper entitled ’Theuse of scientific advice in policy making’ (May1997). The paper was in part a response to theperceived problems of a disjointed relation-ship between science and policy that hadbecome evident during the Bovine SpongiformEncephalopathy (BSE) crisis in Britain in the 1980sand 1990s. May emphasized two issues. First, therewas unlikely to be one science that couldunequivocally inform policy. There was, at leastin the medium term, bound to be scientific (or atleast, epistemological) pluralism. Second, scientificknowledge claims would be accompanied byuncertainty.

May’s response to this plural and uncertainworld was to recommend that scientists shouldbecome more involved in the framing and con-tinual re-assessment of policy. Scientists wouldbest be able to handle a range of scientific opinion,understand the various forms of uncertainty, anddevelop the grounds for deliberative decision-making and/or consensus formation. In otherwords, a one-off provision of scientific adviceshould be replaced with an integrated decision-making forum, which included scientists at manymore points in the policy process (from formula-tion, to processing to implementation). In addition,the aim would be to develop a more procedural,iterative approach to policy.

In a separate, though clearly related, set of devel-opments, which many date to 1980s’ debates onmarine pollution in Europe (see O’Riordan andCameron 1994), scientific pluralism and uncer-tainty are linked to prescriptions that are in partdesigned to avoid the risk of procrastination andthe stalling of policy implementation throughappeals to uncertainty. The prescriptions are often

collectively termed ’the precautionary principle’(O’Riordan and Jordan 1995, O’Riordan 1995). Thelatter extends conventional policy thinking in atleast two ways. First, the timing of policy action isbrought to the fore. The recognition of long-termuncertainties has led to a problematization of notonly how to act but also when to act. Second,the recognition of plurality is taken beyond thetraditional scientific institutions in order to incor-porate a wider range of expertise, including layand practical knowledge communities (see alsoIrwin 1995). Thus, for O’Riordan (cited in ESRC/GEC 1999, 17), there is a set of decision-makingrules which should be followed in order to act in aprecautionary fashion (see Box 1).

Box 1: Elements of a precautionary approach toenvironmental and science policy – afterO’Riordan (ESRC/GEC 1999, 17).

1. Where unambiguous scientific proof of causeand effect is not available, it is necessary toact with a duty of care

2. Where the benefits of early action are judgedto be greater than the likely costs of delay, itis appropriate to take a lead and to informsociety why such action is being taken.

3. Where there is the possibility of irreversibledamage to natural life support functions,precautionary action should be taken irre-spective of the foregone benefits

4. Always listen for calls for a change of course,incorporate representatives of such calls intodeliberative forums, and maintain trans-parency throughout

5. Never shy away from publicity and never tryto suppress information, however unpalat-able. In the age of the internet, someone isbound to find out if information is beingdistorted or hidden

6. Where there is public unease, act decisivelyto respond to that unease by introducingextensive discussions and deliberativetechniques

In essence, O’Riordan and May offer up a morecomplex version of policy making than was preva-lent in the days when science was thought tooperate as a an unequivocal ‘answering machine’(Rheinberger 1997, 32) that could be called upon at

Indeterminacy in-decisions–science policy and politics in the BSE crisis 3

will by decision-makers. Accordingly, scientificknowledge should no longer be considered assomething that can necessarily be produced toorder. The result is a partial rejection of any linearmodel of science-policy practice, whereby theoreti-cal questions are generated, knowledge is pro-duced and policy, which is consistent with thisknowledge, is generated. Scientists and other rel-evant parties ought, in these critical takes on policy,to be drawn into the decision-making process inmore explicit and extended ways. Outcomes willonly be beneficial to the extent that they reflectsomething of this expanded and prolonged partici-pation and that they consider acting in the absenceof definite understanding of all the consequences.It is worth noting at this point that the need torecognize scientific pluralism, and the requirementfor ’in house’ scientific advisors who could providecontinuous monitoring of scientific developments,are prominent recommendations of the final reportof the BSE Inquiry Team (the Phillips’ Report, BSEInquiry 2000). Similarly, calls for the application ofa precautionary approach to public and environ-mental health issues are a prominent feature ofthe report and its media reception (ibid, see alsoBradley 2000).

Persistent problemsWith what are undoubtedly improved conceptionsof knowing and policy-making processes, precau-tionary approaches introduce a set of ideas andprescriptions that highlight knowledge pluralityand uncertainty, broadening participation and therequirement, in a world where consequences ofinaction can be severe, for proactive policy. How-ever, for all the talk of change and despite renewedinterest during the BSE Inquiry, there are elementsin this pluralist, deliberative and precautionarydecision-making model that remain problematicand unresolved and that should be of concern togeography. They give rise to three persistent prob-lems. I will translate each problem into a questionthat will be addressed in subsequent sections.

First, there seems little analysis of how theprecautionary/deliberative model actually worksin practice. It is a normative model, being a state-ment of what should happen, given the possibilityfor an ’ideal speech situation’. Looking at themodel gives us very little sense of the situatedconduct of policy. If we follow the action a littlemore closely, we might find that the model is

unhelpful in taking us from current practice tomore useful formulations of policy and decision-making processes. In particular, following thosegeographical practices and performances that arenot only situated in the world, but also activelymake worlds, or situate the world, seems crucial ifan over generalized form of politics is to beavoided. So the first question is, do specific policyand scientific practices give us a handle on the short-comings of policy and of the limitations of currentnormative models?

Second, whilst precautionary approaches topolicy-making can be accompanied by models ofthe natural world which play down determinatecause and effect knowledge, and speak of irrevers-ibility, indeterminacy and contingency, thereremains a tendency to objectify nature and trans-late indeterminacy and contingency ‘into problemsof deterministic uncertainty’ (Wynne 1997, 137). Inother words, uncertainty is recognized only to theextent that it relates to the as yet unknown aspectsof nature as substance. Alternative understandingsof indeterminacy work with notions of probabilitythat are not simply concerned with the risks ofbeing ’right’ or ’wrong’. In Mazis’ terms;

Probabilities function as explanatory principles, a wayof representing the notion that entities are processesrather than substances, irregular in their unfolding,open to other events, fluctuating in their identity, aknowing of indeterminacy. Such entities are never reallyanywhere, as discrete, self-founding beings, and theprobabilities represent the gaps in their substantialityand in the Cartesian world, rather than designate apaucity of knowledge about the system described(1999, 226 emphasis added).

Given the predominant reading of indetermi-nacy in environmental policy circles (an indetermi-nacy or uncertainty of knowing rather than aknowing of indeterminacy), we are left with a formof realism based upon a pre-existing naturalworld.2 The participative, deliberative decision-making model can all too easily become a means toadjust and or reject various representations of thatsingle world, in order to reach the best availableoutcome, which is itself finally arbitrated by theuncompromising external nature. This form ofepistemological pluralism, combined, as it tendsto be, with a substantive nature, or a naturaluniversalism, produces two interrelated outcomes.First, the goal of rationalizing human choicethrough progressive understanding of a pre-existing natural world, remains. The result is that

Steve Hinchliffe4

the power of human cognition to eventually deter-mine and predict the natural world is largely leftunquestioned. Whilst there is no logical inevitabil-ity of following understandings of causality withprediction and control, the enlightenment assump-tion of human control over nature remains. Second,the notion of a singular natural object or physicalrisk around which there are multiple perceptionssuggests that, in time, and through appropriateprocedure, a consensus and or closure on theproblem under consideration is possible. In hold-ing up the possibility of an object-centred agree-ment, uncertainty is reduced to being largely aproblem of making accurate representations. Eventhough, in the precautionary model, it is incum-bent upon decision-makers to act in the absence offormal closure, the sense is that expert panels,consensus conferences, citizen juries, and so onwill manage to reduce, rather than expand, uncer-tainty over time. A consequence of this is to con-tinue to underestimate the significance of the vari-ous aspects of incertitude (as, for example,indeterminacy and contingency). It is also to down-play the significance of social and natural inter-relations, and by doing so reduce the sensitivitytowards social and natural diversity. Takentogether, there is a reduction in the degree to whichother legitimate concerns, values, materialities andexperiences can count in the longer term (seeWynne (1996 and 1997) for arguments on uncer-tainty and on the failure of reflexive modernizationto take up the challenge of social and naturaldiversity). This requirement to consider the plural-ity and relationality of natures as well as societiesunderpins the second question for this paper. Howcan a reconfigured understanding of nature informpolicy?

The third persistent problem, which is present inprecautionary and deliberative models, is the con-tinuation of an essentially bureaucratic, rationalistdecision-making framework that neglects to sayvery much at all about the politics of policy. Ifpolitics makes its way into these debates it tends todo so through particular constructions of the politi-cal. Interest group pluralism and deliberativedemocratic processes are both imagined in waysthat tend to make political choices and actionssound like cosy negotiations and/or a benignmeans of reaching ‘the best possible decision interms of the public good, through argument andpractical judgement’ (Jacobs 1997, 225). O’Neill’srationalism is indicative of the latter approach:

Through common deliberation, the citizens may showbetter sense than the best of individuals. Such commondeliberation is a necessity in the modern world. Giventhat a variety of knowledge and practices inform manychoices, it is only through such common deliberationthat rational policy is possible. Moreover, goodpractical judgement, the product of local and concreteexperience as well as training in theoretical abstractdisciplines, are requirements of rational ecologicalpolicy (1993, 141).

Whilst proponents of deliberative democracypromise more than compromise, and are gratefullyaware of the risks of moulding or presuming aconsensus, there is an assumption that a procedurefor reaching an inclusive agreement can beapproximated. Agreement can be reached, protago-nists argue, through an appeal to a rationalizedlogic, which may be a form of communicativerationality and which often, in the environmentalsphere, implicitly relies upon a universalized,external, nature. In this sense, and unlike the formsof radical democracy that have been usefully elabo-rated upon by Mouffe (1993 2000), and spatializedby Massey (1995), there is very little considerationof the spurious bases for rationality in and exclu-sions of liberal democracies (for an exception,see Rydin (1999). Mouffe’s (1999a, b) reading ofSchmitt is particularly useful here. In brief, part ofthe argument runs that democratic forms are exclu-sive at the moment of inclusion. Therefore, there isan often unspoken tension in those models ofdeliberative democracy which have as their aim aninclusive, rationally achieved, morally informed,agreement. Such agreements, or decisions, can onlyproceed through an exclusion of an array of non-agreeable matters (humans, non-humans, experi-ences and so on).3 In this, decisions are, as theiretymology suggests, also cuts, or incisions, andtherefore perform distributions over what doesand what does not matter (Serres 1995; Law andMol 1996). Whilst these distributions are thoughtto be amenable to optimization by those whochampion a participative and/or rationalistdecision-making framework, for Mouffe, conflictcannot

either be reduced to a conflict of interests, to bemanaged through negotiation – as in the model ofinterest group pluralism – or visualized as resolvablethrough rational deliberation thanks to the adoption ofan impartial standpoint, as in the deliberative model. Inboth cases what is foreclosed is the properly antagonis-tic dimension, the dimension that would preclude the

Indeterminacy in-decisions–science policy and politics in the BSE crisis 5

possibility of a rational solution (Mouffe 1999a, 5).

Any consensus, solution, or closure, will be anexpression of a hegemony and ‘the crystallizationof power relations’ (Mouffe 1999b, 46). Therefore,the deliberative democratic aspects to current con-structions of an ideal policy situation are in dangerof reducing politics to a cosy pluralism or talkingshop. In doing so, they will miss the multifacetedways in which power relations, difference andantagonisms can and will be felt and expressedover and through any conflict and its so-calleddecisive solution. A third aim or question is how can apolitical process that seeks to remain open to contest, torefuse deliberative or any other form of closure, informthe policy process?

The geographical practices, the natural realismand the spatial politics of policy-making will allfeature in the following two sections. In these, Iengage with some of the science and policy-making that accompanied and framed the BSEcrisis in Britain in the 1980s and 1990s. Section twofollows the production of decisions over the scien-tific nature of BSE and related diseases. It raises theissue of the status of non-humans in knowledgeproduction and thereby challenges the sense of apassive and universal nature waiting to be deter-mined and drawn into the social world. Sectionthree is devised as an attempt to clarify on mattersof decision-making in policy, and similarly chal-lenges this division of natural and social worlds. Ithighlights the exclusions that are collaborativelyand dialogically performed by policy decisions andthe ways in which those exclusions are, tempo-rarily and disastrously, rendered invisible byappeals to technical rationality, material function-ality and universal natural properties. The failureof those decisions to recognize the sociality ofnatural objects (that is their ability to makeassociations), and the spatiality and temporality ofthose associations, results in the intensification ofrisks rather than their amelioration. Together, thetwo sections develop into a commentary uponcurrent understandings of the environmentalpolicy process.

A note on methodology and sourcesThe case study material for this paper has to alarge extent been drawn from the archives and filesof the BSE Inquiry, which took place in Londonfrom March 1998 to December 1999 and whichreported to Ministers in October 2000. The Inquiry

involved 138 hearing days, 630 witnesses givingone or more written statements and 333 peoplegiving oral evidence. The majority of this and otherdepartmental information has been made publiclyavailable, much of it in electronic format currentlyavailable at the BSE Inquiry web site (www.bse.org.uk). According to the Inquiry Chair, thiscollection constitutes a unique archive, allowingpublic access to the substance of advice to Govern-ment Ministers, and to the processes throughwhich the advice is formulated (BSE Inquiry 1999).However, it should be noted that many of thedocuments are undoubtedly mediated through ajudicial or quasi-judicial framework. That is, fromminutes of meetings at government departments tooral evidence given at the Inquiry hearings, adegree of reflexivity as to the legal implications ofany form of account helps to frame not only whatis said but also what is recorded.4 I am thereforedealing with texts which are not only stronglycircumscribed but are also evidently cross-referenced to form paper trails where responsibil-ity for statements can easily be dispersed throughan organizational framework. The analytical diffi-culties in using this archive should not therefore beunderestimated.

Meanwhile, and in addition to the complex,inter-textual nature of the record, the archive isvast. Therefore, for practical purposes, there is afocus on particular episodes and on particularissues. It is fair to say that these particular takes onevents are not necessarily indicative of a broaderpicture, or necessarily more significant than otherepisodes. Yet, neither are they random selections.They have emerged from a long process of follow-ing controversies, arguments and debates throughthe empirical materials that were available. I wasaided in this through the use of the Inquiry team’s’factual accounts’ as initial familiarization devices.The factual accounts are arranged according tospecific events and organizations that make up thecrisis (including for example, the events leading upto the ruminant feed ban, the role of CentralVeterinary Laboratories and so on). They containspecific reference to Inquiry evidence, writtenstatements and oral evidence, which, in manycases, can then be accessed electronically. Using theaccounts as the first port of call was therefore ameans of ordering the Inquiry’s documentationand of prioritising analysis. They enabled, forexample, the identification of moments in theinquiry when things didn’t add up or where there

Steve Hinchliffe6

were serious questions over a particular account ofevents or item of evidence. From this point, Iwould follow up the issue as far as possiblethrough various paper trails and attend the Inquiryhearings on those days when key people wereexpected to be giving evidence.

In order to handle the large quantities of text andto build up cross-referenced accounts of policyevents I used the navigation and theory build-ing capabilities of Atlas-ti, a computer packagedesigned to facilitate qualitative data analysis (fora review and critique see Crang et al (1997), andHinchliffe et al (1997). Finally, in addition tomaterial that was directly relevant to the Inquiry,other scientific writings were consulted and added,where possible, to the textual database.

2. Experimental systems and thematerialities of decisions

The BSE debacle in the UK gathered momentumin the late 1980s, reached a peak in terms of presscoverage in 1990 and 1996, and continued toproduce media debate into the present (Miller1999; Ratzan 1998; Woods 1998). One of the char-acteristic features of policy and media debatethroughout has been the legitimacy and relevanceof scientific advice on the disease (Miller 1999;Winter 1997). In terms of policy model, everyeffort was made to (be seen to) follow a linearmodel of decision-making (ideas making science,making policy). Committees were convened andstaffed by eminent scientists (the Southwoodand Tyrell committees and SEAC, SpongiformEncephalopathy Advisory Committee, are allexamples of this reliance on science). Neverthe-less, this was not an exercise in scientific plural-ism. The scientific advisors were chosen not fortheir experimental awareness of the disease butfor their ’non-territorial’ expertise. For example,scientists with considerable experimental experi-ence at the Neuropathogenisis Unit in Edinburghwere made peripheral to the initial policy debateson the disease, and there was a deliberate deci-sion to exclude anyone who was involved in thecontroversies over disease agency (Lacey 1994;Pennington 2000). This geography of knowledge,which involves the systematic exclusion of thoseinvolved in (scientific and funding) controversies(and particularly those labelled as ’controversial’)from policy debate, is something that has con-

cerned May (1997) and the BSE Inquiry. But thereis another aspect to this exclusion, an aspect thatrelates to a different geography of knowledge.Exclusion of experimental scientists from debateproduced, I will argue, a tendency to downplaythe practical, material and situated aspects ofdisease knowledge. And it was this kind ofexperimental, situated knowledge which couldproduce what I earlier referred to as a ’knowingof indeterminacy’.

Experiments and epistemic things

We have begun to understand . . that the pair human-nonhuman does not involve a tug-of-war between twoopposite forces. On the contrary, the more activity thereis from one, the more activity there is from the other.The more ... [a laboratory scientist] works in [their]laboratory, the more autonomous [their] fermentbecomes (Latour 1999, page 147).

As cranial dissections of clinically affected cattleproceeded, the symptomatic, the visual, the struc-tural and then the molecular characteristics of theunsympathetically named ’mad cow disease’ wererecorded. Who knows how many diagnosesoccurred before the disease was recognized as asingular entity – as a disease rather than an unex-plained fatality here, or as a strange variety ofsomething else there? There are procedures inplace for vets to record and compare experiencesand to seek advice. This was one function, at least,of the regional veterinary centres and the stateveterinary service. In time, and to cut a complexand no doubt controversial story short, animalhealth experts moved from the recognition of anunclassified set of symptoms, to a new disease(based on similarity of symptoms) to a classifica-tion of the disease as a TSE (TransmissibleSpongiform Encephalopathy). At and before this’point’, similarities were drawn in terms of clinicalsymptoms between the new disease and sheepscrapie. The latter had been endemic in Britishsheep for well over 200 years (it was first detectedin the early eighteenth century). It was also reason-ably well studied.

Scrapie had always been something of a mystery.Whilst its symptoms were well known, even to theextent that various clinical strains were recognised,its transmission was far from clear. Over the courseof the twentieth century, attempts to understanddisease transmission tended to make the identifi-cation of discrete disease agents the priority.

Indeterminacy in-decisions–science policy and politics in the BSE crisis 7

This normally involved the ’purification’ andbiological/ molecular/ biochemical character-ization of a replicating ‘life’ form. In other words,the disease was expected to have a particular(micro-)spatiality. Discrete entities were expected,to which primary properties and agencies could beattributed. To this end, there was a tendency toequate the transmission of disease with the con-veyance of nucleic acid in stable form from oneindividual host to another.

The ’central dogma’ of molecular biologyundoubtedly informed a good deal of the experi-mental work on scrapie and related diseases(Keyes 1999a). Crick’s formulation of this dogma,stating only that sequential information could passfrom nucleic acid to nucleic acid, or from nucleicacid to protein, but not from protein to nucleic acidor from protein to protein (see Crick 1958; Keyes1999a), set the scene for James Watson’s moreprescriptive assertion that, as the slogan had it,’DNA makes RNA makes protein’. Watson’s linearand one-way flow of biological information pre-vailed throughout the 1960s, and into the 1970s –periods in which theories of replication andgenetics brought molecular biology to the brink ofdisciplinary pre-dominance.5 Nevertheless, and asI will detail, the framework of virology and thecentral dogma cannot be described as determiningthe scrapie experimental science. The virologicalstories about the agency of scrapie did not hold upin the laboratory. For some reason, the infectiousagents were ’objecting’ to the stories that werebeing told about them (see Latour (2000) for thisdefinition of objectivity). To understand theseobjections, it is useful to consider what else isinvolved, other than stories, in experimentation.

For the biologist and historian of science,Rheinberger, experimental systems are the genuineworking units of contemporary research in whichthe scientific objects and the technical conditions oftheir production are inextricably interconnected(1997, 2). Furthermore, it is the activity of experi-mentation, its embodiments and conduct that arethe conditions of possibility for new knowledge.This active sense of the production of knowledge isquite different from the idea that science proceedsthrough the generation of abstract ideas, followedby experimentation. Experiments have for toolong been regarded as constituting instances ofverification, or corroboration, of refutation, or ofthe modification of theories . . . as mere empiricalinstances in the evolution of theoretical proposi-

tions (Rheinberger 1997, 15).6 In an earlier paper,Rheinberger sets out his alternative understandingof experimental systems.

The trajectory of an experimental system can be con-sidered to consist of a progressive reproductive refine-ment, and of a series of bifurcation points. It ischaracteristic of such bifurcation points that at the verytime when a decision has to be made as to which of thepossible lines of inquiry to follow, the informationnecessary to anticipate all the possible consequences ofthe choice is usually not in place. This is an intrinsic,epistemic characteristic of the research process, andit cannot be reduced either to an individual mind’scompetence for judging a given research situation, or tothe particular circumstances of a local research environ-ment with its facilities or impediments. Therefore thefuture of an experimental system is never the future of a pastalone: it is a series of events that is underdetermined by thatpast (Rheinberger 1996, 411, emphasis added).

In order to evoke some of the historial7 materialityof these experimental events, Rheinberger adoptsthe term epistemic thing. These are scientific objects,‘whose unknown characteristics are the target forexperimental inquiry’ (238). For Rheinberger, fol-lowing epistemic things, rather than followingscientists (Latour 1987) or, before the sociology ofscience, following scientific theories, providesopportunities for reducing our reliance on subject-or object-centred versions of scientific trajectory(see Latour (1999) for a similar, if distinct project).Far from being pre-existing entities, epistemicthings are produced in and co-productive ofexperimental systems. Epistemic things are notsimply matters that can ′be brought to lightthrough sophisticated manipulations’ (Rheinberger1997, 28). Paradoxically, epistemic things embodywhat one does not know. They are vague and theyare absent in their experimental presence. Theypresent themselves in a characteristic, irreduciblevagueness. As I will show in a moment, in terms ofTSE science, they are the strange textures andmixtures that didn’t fit or perform in accordancewith the central story of molecular science.

Rheinberger’s interest in objects shares a gooddeal with others who have sought to take prag-matogony (or the genealogy of scientific objects)seriously. But what Rheinberger seems to offer is amore explicit sense of the creativity, or spatio-temporal multiplicity (see Massey 1999a), ofexperimentation. For Rheinberger, science in actioninvolves more than the drawing together of texts,apparatus, money, ideas, humans and nonhumans.

Steve Hinchliffe8

This attention to ’drawing together’ that becomesthe focus of at least some forms of network analy-sis (especially those that tend to objectify the nounnetwork rather than highlight the relationality ofthe verb net-work, see Law (1994) tends to presup-pose a closed system. That is, in some (perhapsmore epistemological) versions of Actor NetworkTheory (ANT), a truth claim can to all intents andpurposes be explained with reference to the vari-ous associations that made it possible. But in thiskind of exercise, there is no excess – and thereforethere is no clear room for the radically new. Indeed,any ‘thing’ or process that looks new or innovativeis re-described as an effect of a wider set of rela-tions or network. Now, excess seems to be some-thing that we need to associate with scientificactivities in our times. As Rheinberger notes, ‘wewould not have the incommensurable plurality ofthe sciences as we experience – and fear – themtoday if their movement were not excessive, if theywere not continuously producing a surplus that isbeyond what we may have wanted, beyond whatwe may have been able to imagine’ (1997, 23).

So for Rheinberger, experimentation is ‘an embod-ied disclosing activity that transcends its technicalconditions and creates an open reading frame for theemergence of unprecedented events’ (ibid 31, emphasisadded). The experimental system, to be successful,is therefore a machine for generating the future(not the exposition of the past). In contrast to thetraditional view from the philosophy of science,experimentation is not equivalent to ’an answeringmachine’. As Latour (forthcoming) and Stengers(1997) would concur, it is the question generatingmachine of science. It is a moment of risk taking, orof not being in total control, and of finding theconditions of possibility for being fundamentallyaffected by the world (see Latour forthcoming).8

The case of TSEs helps to illustrate this facility ofexperimental systems.

TSEs in the science laboratory

Since the scrapie agent multiplies in the host animal, ithas been assumed that nucleic acid must be a part of itsstructure. However . . our data strongly support theconclusion of Pattison that this agent is likely to be ofan unusual nature (Alper et al 1966, 283, cited in Keyes1999a, 11, emphasis added).

As I stated earlier, TSE research was largely organ-ized through the discursive practices of virologyand molecular biology’s central dogma (Keyes

1999a; Ridley and Baker 1998). In classic reductivemode, the search for an agent progressed throughactivity trials that were performed as a series ofproductions and reductions in scale. Over manyyears the most infective parts of animals withscrapies were identified through these experi-ments. Aided by filtration apparatus, centrifuges,sterilising equipment and a huge number of smallmammals, including mice (later transgenic), guineapigs, marmosets and chimpanzees, workers gradu-ally produced filtrates, precipitates and superna-tants with higher and higher activity rates (orability to produce infection in a host animal – seeRidley and Baker (1998) and for a review of theanimal stress caused in experiments on transgenicmice see Jenkins and Combes (1999). Despite thisexperimental ’success’, the ’agent’ was behavingbadly in terms of the central dogma. The necessaryfeatures for a pathogen were seemingly missing.Tests on the infective scrapie material in the 1960sand 1970s suggested an absence of nucleic acid.The inferred result being that disease transmissionwas being caused by an unconventional agent withneither DNA or RNA in its make-up. This absenceof a sequential, informational coding molecule in adisease agent was regarded as heresy by a majorityof scientists.9

It is worth re-visiting Rheinberger’s character-ization of experimental systems at this point. Thematerialities of the experimental system, and of theepistemic object, along with the open readingframe adopted by these experimental scientists,created the conditions necessary for a bifurcationpoint (Rheinberger 1996, 411). This was a momentwhere conceptual and material undecidabilityproduced the conditions of possibility for novelty.The experimental science was not, contra Doyle(1997), a functive series of operations, discipliningthe epistemic object so that it became a matter ofreference. Rather, an event was taking place,wherein the ‘object’ was ‘objecting’ to the normalutterances that were being made about it (seeLatour 2000). Such a bifurcation required a practicethat was at least as conceptual (belonging to anirregular and open reading frame) as it was func-tive (a disciplining mode of organising knowledge– see Deleuze and Guattari (1994). In other words,the experimental science associated with TSEscould only proceed with an irregular, if bounded,approach. The epistemic object mattered. Theexperimental object was not simply narratedinto being, and scientists were not in control. The

Indeterminacy in-decisions–science policy and politics in the BSE crisis 9

decisions made in laboratories were complex pro-ductions – that is they folded together subjects andobjects, concepts and materials (see Stengers 1997).

In short, the substance produced in the labora-tory according to technical conventions was notentirely what was expected. But the bifurcationpoint was by no means a revolution. There wereplenty of attempts to rescue Watson’s linear modelof information transfer in the face of these experi-mental problems. For example, preparations of theagent were dogged by so-called impurities that‘could well be masking the infectious agent’s trueproperties’ (Keyes 1999a, 16). And indeed, whetherscientists looked for nucleic acid or not, the spatiallogic of ’true properties’ remained. The idea of adiscrete agent continued to inform the epistemicobjects produced in the laboratory.

Continuing the heretical story, in the 1980s,equipped with new experimental techniques(including gel electrophoresis), Prusiner and col-leagues in San Francisco were able to produce aninfective fraction that was predominantly if notsolely proteinaceous. An acronym, Prion – smallproteinaceous infectious particles (Prusiner 1982,1995) was assigned to this unusual disease agent.In some senses, the experimental object was start-ing to stabilize and to take shape. Even so, thenoun and the shape managed to raise a series ofnew questions in its experimental setting. Indeed,the prion hypothesis seemed to open up ratherthan close down scientific conflict. One of thekey opponents to the prion hypothesis wasRichard Kimberlin (see for example, Kimberlin1982, 1986) – who, despite the official decision toexclude scientists involved in controversies overTSE, was to become one of the main scientificadvisers and risk analysts in the BSE debacle.Kimberlin was wary of abandoning conventionalthinking on disease and replication, and noted thatthe existence of transmissible strains of the diseasesuggested that nucleic acid needed to be present inthe agent in order to convey this strain specificinformation.

Nevertheless, and despite strong argumentsagainst the theoretical possibility of prions,Prusiner and colleagues continued to shufflematerialities, trace new results, and ’purify’ differ-ent substances in their experimental system(although the infectious protein was so sticky andinsoluble that purification has remained no morethan a theoretical possibility). In 1982, a seem-ingly unique protein was isolated from scrapie

infected hamster brains – a protein that wasthought to be absent in non-infected hamsterbrain and which demonstrated activity rates inkeeping with dose concentration. Prusiner andcolleagues labelled this protein PrP – prion pro-tein (Prusiner 1995). However, as the sequentialcharacter of amino acids for this protein wasmapped out, it soon became apparent that prionprotein was equally present in infected and non-infected brain material. The noun prion had notonly shifted to being an adjective, it also startedto lose much of its specificity. So not only did theagent confound the linear information transfermodel which had become the central dogma ofmolecular biology by seemingly having no spe-cific nucleic acid, it also seemed to confoundanother basic tenet of biology. If the sequentialcharacter of the molecule was not determining itspathogenic character, then another form of infor-mation transfer was needed. The differentiation ofscrapie and normal prion protein on the basis of asecondary fold seemed to rescue the idea ofan agent with primary properties. Nevertheless,debates rumbled on as to the exact means bywhich the scrapie prion protein managed to repli-cate in a host body (see Ridley and Baker (1998)and Pennington (2000) for reviews).

Indeed, scrapie and other TSEs remained con-tentious in their experimental system. The diseaseagent as epistemic object continued to generatequestions. And the challenges multiplied in com-ing years as not only did TSEs threaten thecentral tenets of molecular biology, they alsoadded to the growing sense of concern over thestate of food production and supply in Britainand elsewhere (see Lang 1998; Macnaghten andUrry 1997; Hinchliffe 2000b). Furthermore, just asprions, like viruses before them, managed to chal-lenge divisions between living and inert matter,they also started to unsettle species’ boundariesand divisions. As evidence of transspecies trans-mission of BSE started to grow, the ’entrenchedcartographies’ of species being, or the ’spaces ofspecies’ identity, were disturbed (see Whatmore(1997) for the ethico-political significance of thistype of disturbance, and Ansell-Pearson (1997) fora detailed development of the ’reversals’ in narra-tive that viroid lives can perform). Before I go onto look at the attempts to stall this ’super-conductive’ event (Clark 1997), I will summarizewhat this account of the experimental system ofTSEs has provided.

Steve Hinchliffe10

First of all, the science of TSEs most definitelydid not conform to a linear model of knowledgeproduction where ideas were tested throughexperimentation. Rather, experimentation and theproduction of ideas developed hand-in-hand.Experiments could not be conceptualized asanswering a set of pre-ordered questions. Indeed,there is little sense from the accounts and reportsthat the experiments were predominantly set up toadjudicate upon clearly stated questions. Which issimilar to saying that decisions in the laboratorywere not made by a purely cognitive agent, incontrol of his or her experimental system. Indeed,the ability to listen to, respond to and even feel(albeit through a range of media and instrumenta-tion) the vagueness of the epistemic thing was acondition of possibility for the production of newknowledge. In addition, and out of this openreading frame, the experiments generated as manyuncertainties and as much ignorance as they didanswers. So, as the TSE research progressed, therewas no clear relationship between the quantity ofexperimental time and the level of uncertainty andignorance. If anything, ignorance regarding thedisease itself, and disease in general, became morerather than less apparent. The central dogma ofmolecular biology was threatened, as were notionsof biological agency, replication, biological infor-mation, infection, protein synthesis and folding(see Keyes 1999a,b). Meanwhile, scientific disagree-ment became more, rather than less, apparent asthe research progressed.

Second, there can be no appeal to obdurateobjects-in-nature in order to explain the experimen-tal trajectory. From what I have already said, itshould be clear that the epistemic things of the TSEexperimental system were far from being anything.They were not shapeless or hapless materials wait-ing only to be reformed, and subject only to thevagaries of narrative or ‘social’ fashion. Indeed,they could be said to have had a hand in fashioningthe experimental system and were instrumental inexperimental decisions. But, neither were prionsa-social beings. If sociality means an ability to asso-ciate (see Latour 2000), and if such ability toassociate is far from being a fixed property (so thatwe don’t make the mistake of distinguishing be-tween primary and secondary qualities – ibid.),then prions start to lose some, but not all, of theirsingularity. As their stickiness and ’impurity’ tes-tify, prions don’t stand still. Furthermore, they canbe social within and amongst a range of animal

species. Indeed, their mobility across tissue andspecies boundaries has been one of the more chal-lenging aspects of TSE history. More than this,prions are not simply relational matters, they canalso act in ways that are characteristic of whatHetherington and Lee (2000), following Serres,have termed blank figures. In other words, TSEsgenerally, and prions more specifically, form one ofa number of conditions of possibility for this par-ticular set of (diseased) inter-species associations.In being able to cross species barriers, prions are, tosome extent at least, constitutionally indifferent totheir placement in specific or species orders. Thismeans that they are motile as well as mobile (ibid).So, knowing prions is not simply a matter of draw-ing molecular diagrams, and labelling fixed prop-erties (although this is part of it). And it is notsimply admitting that there is more to know aboutthat structure or set of properties. It is also therealization that prion sociability, and their role asfacilitators of sometimes detrimental sociability,both in the laboratory and in other set-ups (includ-ing of course the industrial-agricultural set up), canexceed their known properties. Knowing prions istherefore a knowing of indeterminacy. It is thisform of knowing, and the status of prions as epis-temic things, that we should refuse to actively for-get as the history of prion discovery is written.Likewise, geographies of prion associations can as-sist in generating a greater sense of the mutability,and therefore uncertainty, of non-human identities.

To be sure, and as the continuing search for’pure’ prions testifies, a knowing of indeterminacydoes not always follow from experimentation (seeStrand (2000) for a discussion of the durability ofnatural realism in molecular life sciences). But, thisform of knowing, which rejects primary properties,and diverges from a geography of self-identicalobjects, was ruled out of court when experimentalscientists were excluded from early discussions ofBSE policy. In the next section, I turn to anotheraspect of the BSE policy process, this time focusingon the implementation of an industry-wide ban offeed-stuffs that was conceived and first enacted (ifnot wholly implemented) in 1988. The purposehere will be not only to develop further the rel-evance of these heterogeneous materialities, orsocial natures. It is also to address the third ques-tion, introduced in part 1, concerning the politicalforms that are invoked in policy situations wheredecisions are made in situations of appreciableuncertainty.

Indeterminacy in-decisions–science policy and politics in the BSE crisis 11

3. The politics of decisions

[In 1992, a farmer from near York, who had reportedwhat he suspected was a BSE affected calf] was visitedby the first Ministry vet from Leeds, who said ’Yes, thatis BSE’ clinically put a restriction order on it, and a fewdays later . . a second Ministry vet took a cursory lookat the animal and said: ’It is not BSE because it is bornafter the feed ban’, and said to the farmer: ’Have itslaughtered and send it into the food chain if you wantto use it.’ (Richard Lacey’s oral evidence, BSE INQ:tr980317, 93–94).

The ban, referred to in this excerpt, specified thatruminant derived protein would no longer beallowed to be fed to other ruminants (an industrial-agricultural practice that had been common formost of the twentieth century). The feed ban,which was introduced in 1988, has been widelypresented as a success (Tyrrell and Taylor 1996;Harpold et al 1998), a clear example of acting witha duty of care, going further than the currentevidence would have sanctioned, and, by doing so,succeeding in slowing the spread of disease incattle. But, as the calves born after the feed banattest, the precautionary policy did not halt thedisease. The case also suggests that the secondvet’s confidence in the ban was misplaced, and thatfalse assurances might have led to prolongedhuman and animal exposure to health risks. Tounderstand something of that confidence and ofthe other conditions which made disease transmis-sion possible after the ban was implemented,I need to engage in some detail with thepolicy decisions. In doing so I will tease out thedeficiencies of a-social understandings of natureand of a-political conceptions of policy procedure.The following is therefore a partial history of apolicy, in three parts. The first introduces someof the agonistic processes that are involved inmaking a policy. I argue that precautionary policiesare a struggle to align all manner of discourses,materialities, institutions and knowledges, makingthem an inherently political exercise. Moreover,this struggle does not result in a consensus oragreement without there being distributions andexclusions. So, the second part highlights the dis-tributions that were performed by the ruminantfeed ban policy. Far from being ’total’ (as it hasbeen described to the BSE Inquiry by the Govern-ment’s Chief Veterinary Officer from 1988 to 1997,Keith Meldrum – see BSEINQ: tr991110: 101), thepolicy assumed and then performed a disease

geography. In other words, the policy dependedupon a multitude of decisions over what andwhere did and what and where didn’t matter. Thethird part looks more closely at the denial of thisdistributive or geographical work. In its presenta-tion as the outcome of technical and internallyconsistent deliberation, based on an unsubstanti-ated though widely held view that the agency andmateriality of the disease was both straightforwardand predictable (conforming to determinable anduniversally applicable properties), the ruminantfeed ban embodied a reduced sensitivity to theinevitable indeterminacies that both pre-exist andare brought into existence in the implementation ofpolicy (see Wynne 1992). The example suggeststhat in order to be something other than hackneyedslogans, phrases like precautionary principle andopen or deliberative decision-making need to befirmly set in a politically contested and contestablesetting.

Conducting policyAt a meeting on 8 January 1988, the animalhealth experts at MAFF (Ministry for Agriculture,Fisheries and Food), along with the chief vet(then Howard Rees) and an epidemiologist (JohnWilesmith) all agreed that BSE was becoming asignificant disease. There were now 30–40 newcases each month and the trend in the rate of newcases was rising alarmingly. The epidemiologistpresented a case arguing that disease transmissionhad primarily occurred through contaminatedmeat and bone meal (MBM) and possibly tallow inanimal feed. The most probable source of thiscontamination was the entry of scrapie infectedsheep, and possibly the re-cycling of BSE infectedcattle, into the feed system. The feeding of rumi-nant remains to domestic, zoological and farmanimals was not new (it had been going on for themost of the century), so it was the failure tode-activate the disease agents in the processing ofanimal feed that was the focus for concern. Havingnoted the hypothetical status of this prognosis, andafter raising animal health and welfare concernsand the possible implications of the disease forhuman health, a precautionary approach wasagreed upon. Those present would send a submis-sion to the Agriculture Minister, recommendingthat clinically affected cattle should be slaughtered,prevented from reaching the food chain andfarmers should be compensated to encourage

Steve Hinchliffe12

compliance. They also recommended that furtherwork needed to be commissioned on the MBMhypothesis, with a view to producing a precaution-ary measure of removing ruminant derived proteinfrom animal feed.

The submission’s journey from the animal healthdivision at MAFF to the Minister for Agriculturetook 1½ months. On route, the paper work passedthrough a number of hands, including those ofPermanent and Under Secretaries, who hadresponsibilities for adding cost estimates, checkingthe submission’s compatibility with other agricul-tural policy, raising issues of a legal nature and soon. Could farmers be compensated from the publicpurse if no danger to human health had beendemonstrated? Wouldn’t this contravene the 1981Animal Health Act? Did compensation set aprecedent for a raft of other crop and animaldisease problems and so effectively sanction fur-ther subsidization of the agricultural sector?10

Could a ban on ruminant-derived feed be enforcedin lieu of a definitive statement on the origins ofthe disease? What would the effect be on the feedindustry and on farming practices? These ques-tions were all appended to the submission inverbal and written form as it moved (see BSEINQ,RFA07).

The questions spoke of concern regarding finan-cial costs to the public (MAFF was under severebudgetary restraint), and costs to the farm-ing industry (as MAFF’s Parliamentary UnderSecretary put it ‘the slaughter policy . . wouldundoubtedly have immediate detrimental effect onexports’ BSEINQ: RFA07: 18). But the questionsalso exhibited nervousness over the status ofuncertainties. The eventual recipient of the submis-sion, John MacGregor, Agriculture Minister at thetime, told the Inquiry that, ‘[he was conscious of]taking actions and then finding that they were notjustified by the evidence that was coming forward;you would then be subject to legal actions’ (BSEINQ: tr981202, 33). This kind of reasoning mayhave contributed to the decision to take no statu-tory action in February when the Minister firstsaw the submission. In contrast, 3 months later,MacGregor decided to act swiftly, at least withrespect to the proposed feed ban (the slaughterpolicy would take even longer, as its sanctioningrequired non-agricultural allies in the Departmentof Health, see BSEINQ RFA07). The time had beenspent attempting to ’firm up’ the meat and bone-meal hypothesis (with little real success), and in

discussion with feed manufacturers and renderers,legal advisers and accounting experts. Crucially,these discussions provided enough indication thatthe uncertainties over the cause and transmissionof the disease would not interfere with the logisticsand legalities of introducing a ban. In effect, suffi-cient allies had been made to start the implemen-tation or better, the translation to action, of theproposed feed ban. As the term translation sug-gests, this alignment produced some subtle and notso subtle shifts in the ban’s meaning.

The crucial issue for my purposes is that theproduction of policy is a struggle to align allmanner of people, utterances, departments andknowledges. The alliances furnished the precau-tionary policy with stability, reduced its potentialcosts and also allowed for the broader distributionof responsibility across a range of agencies andinstitutions. A precautionary policy does not, there-fore, survive or fall on its own merits. It is anetworked achievement – with the result that as itis inserted into the complex juridical and financialworld, changes will occur. This is not necessarily abad thing, it need not always be considered as awatering down of content. But, as I will suggest inthe next two subsections, any active forgetting thatsuch changes have been performed results in adenial of the politics of decisions, a denial that canhave disastrous effects.

DistributionsFrom February to May 1988, the feed ban policyand the MBM hypothesis were being ‘firmed up’,to use MAFF officials’ terms. Despite acknowl-edged uncertainties with respect to the evidencefrom a series of tests on feed processing plantsdesigned to demonstrate that the disease remainedactive during feed manufacture (the testingprocedures were heavily criticized by industryrepresentatives), the Minister for Agriculture rec-ommended that precautionary action was needed.‘There was a need to be seen to be doing something(BSE INQ, RFA07, 35). To this end, ‘a completewithdrawal of the material in question from rationsfor ruminants was the only safe option . . . theevidence pointed to a speedy and compulsory ban ofsheepmeat material in feed for ruminants (BSEINQ: tr991110, 10–11, emphasis added).11 Therewas a decision to act. But this statement was not asstraightforward as it might at first read. Indeed, itssuccess as a decision was in part a product of themultiplicity of the statement.

Indeterminacy in-decisions–science policy and politics in the BSE crisis 13

As I have already indicated, a good deal of workhad already gone into networking the ruminantfeed ban so that it didn’t fall at the first fence. TheMinister’s statement was already, in a sense, arobust statement. It was robust in terms of thealliances that had been made, and, as importantly,in terms of its ability to be translated into action.For, in the months following the initial submission,some fairly stark distinctions, marking distribu-tions between matters of relative importance, hadbeen made and incorporated into the ban. Ageography of the disease, of where it might strike,had been drawn up. As I will demonstrate, thatgeography conformed to a particular cartographyof states, species and industrial practices. As I willalso show, the sociable disease agent was drawing,and was increasingly able to draw, some ratherdifferent maps.

First, as a result of the pre-decision discussions,the ’complete withdrawal’ was not so complete. Ithad already been qualified by the words ’fromrations for ruminants’. So potentially infected feedcould still be manufactured if it was fed to non-ruminants. Pigs and poultry could continue to befed with the suspected material. Meanwhile, at thattime, the ban did not extend across the EnglishChannel or over the Irish Sea (the lack of reportedincidences of BSE was interpreted as no risk). Socattle, sheep and goats, along with other farmanimals, could continue to eat suspected feed inother European states. In short, the feed industrycould continue to manufacture the same ruminant-derived feed products, so avoiding costly changesto industrial and supply processes. Markets werebeing protected, an activity that performed a par-ticular distribution or geography of animaldisease-susceptibility. British sheep and cattle, fedprotein rich supplement, were the critical group.All others, including pigs and poultry, foreignruminants, ruminants fed in field (even on landfertilized with MBM derived products), domesticpets and most zoological animals were ‘spared’ thefeed ban.

Second, despite all of this pre-statement distribu-tive work, the Minister’s decision soon ran intotrouble when it came to worrying further aboutimplementation. As one MAFF official told theinquiry, ‘the ban was completely unenforceable if itwas not voluntarily obeyed (BSE INQ, t980623,136). The assumption was that implementing animmediate, compulsory ban would meet hugeresistance from the farming industry, with possible

legal challenges and compensation claims. The lackof scientific evidence was such that the outcome ofany legal challenge would be uncertain. So MAFFofficials sought to promote a degree of voluntaryself-interest within the industry and engender asense of deferred responsibility.12 In effect, the banwas not presented as compulsory.

Third, this inability to enact a compulsory bandemanded an even greater degree of agreementacross government and the farming industry as tothe importance of the ban. A series of meetings washeld in late May and with increasing frequency inearly June in order to discuss the ban with the feedindustry, wholesalers and farmers groups. In thecourse of the discussions, several clarifications tothe ban became apparent. As well as not beingcomplete, and no longer being strictly compulsory,the ban would not involve the withdrawal (in thesense of ’recall’) of ruminant derived feed. Thefinancial, legal and logistical barriers to a recall ofstock were regarded by MAFF officials to be insur-mountable. This meant that manufacturers, com-pounders, wholesalers and farmers would be ableto use up pipeline stocks. In turn, the ban was notspeedy. Pipeline stocks could be delivered to farm-ers for use by 18 July, a period of 1½ months afterthe ban was announced. This ’period of grace’ wasarranged to allow the industry to adjust its prac-tices. There is every indication from minutes ofmeetings that the period would have been longerhad MAFF’s information division not raised thematter of another important ally in making the banwork. They suggested that any further extension tothe ban could threaten what had so far been anfavourable press reception (BSE INQ: RFA07, 55).

In the pre-ban discussions, and in further discus-sions over implementation, alliances were beingmade that had geographical consequences. Thetime-spaces of the disease were being mappedacross states, across species, and across the every-day workings of a farming industry with its com-plex supply rhythms and modes of ordering. Inhindsight, it is easy to state that it was an ’unreal-istic’ mapping. Factories and farms continued toprovide conditions for disease transfer. Feed fornon-ruminants continued to be mixed with feed forruminants. Pipeline feed stocks took a long time tobe used up (partly as a result of summer pasturefeeding). Meanwhile, the temporary and voluntarystatus of the ban translated into non-urgent actionin some quarters. The list of potential boundarycrossings, from states to farms to tissues and cells,

Steve Hinchliffe14

is a long one. The disease was sociable in ways thatwere not anticipated in the ban, but also in waysthat the ban itself facilitated (in for example, thecontinued exports, and in the cross contaminationof feed stocks that were nevertheless labelled as fitfor ruminants).

In order to explain this cartographical failure itwould be conventional to name and shame theusual (social or human) suspects (see Serres 1995).It might be argued that plural interests, repre-sented in the meetings and memos, produced anagreement with which everyone could live. Indeed,there can be little doubt that some MAFF officialswere concerned to protect the commercial interestsof the various parts of the feed industry (especiallyexports), and that various elements of the feedindustry lobbied MAFF officials publicly and pri-vately. To be sure, there is no intention here to letthese characters off the hook. But there may well bemore to the ruminant feed ban than this, andpossibly more to politics than the representation ofand negotiation between established interests. Todemonstrate this, I want to make two arguments.First, the policy owed as much to dialogics as it didto the representation of interests. Second, in orderfor a decision to be reached through a dialogue,certain assumptions about the material characterand properties of the disease became established.Thus, to reach agreement, the discussions seemedto require a ’naturally’ stable understanding of thedisease. Any knowing of indeterminacy associatedwith the epistemic object of BSE was activelyerased as consensus was developed. My argumentwill be that such an erasure might have beenavoided. Furthermore, by keeping indeterminacyin the foreground, it might have been more difficultto discount the contested geography and politics ofthe food production business.

Dialogical decisions and dosesIn the hubbub of deliberation, ’interests’ look lessclear than might be expected. Elements of theindustry, for example, were both wary of the banbut were also only too aware of the dangers ofrefusing to comply. Dangers included shifts inpublic and consumer sympathy and the potentialfor liability should they refuse to fully implementthe ban. Parts of government, meanwhile, wereconcerned that industry would not co-operate, atthe same time as being afraid that they wouldimplement the ban with too much vigour, so rais-

ing the public profile of the disease (see BSE INQ:stat24c, 5). Further, and to compound this difficultyof mapping interests on to interest groups, thelatter were far from being uniform entities.Industry, for example, was made up of a complexset of elements and relations. Renderers, com-pounders, farmers, unions, breeders, meat pro-ducers, pet food manufacturers, multi-nationals,private abattoirs, and so on could not be reliedupon to toe one particular line. Even discreteindustry associations like UKRA (the UKRenderers Association) and UKASTA (the UKAgricultural Supply Trade Association) found itdifficult to represent the full range of their mem-bers’ interests, and could not, of course, representthose renderers and agricultural suppliers that layoutside their organizations. Similarly, MAFFincluded laboratory scientists, vets, accountants,permanent civil servants and government minis-ters who were organized into a fairly robust hier-archical structure, but one that did not necessarilycoalesce into an interest group. What this suggestsis that maintaining a steady set of interests andmatching these to desirable outcomes was by nomeans a straightforward task. Rather, interests,means and outcomes shifted as uncertainties werediscussed, deliberated and incorporated into fur-ther actions. And, as many witnesses told theinquiry, the speed of scientific and political devel-opments was such that it was impossible to settleinterests and to make clear representations duringkey moments in the crisis.

There can be little doubt that those involved inpolicy discussions negotiated what might be intheir interests. In other words, interests were arelational achievement. Parties second-guessedtheir counterparts’ reactions to matters that theymight put forward, a form of ‘double-voiced’ dia-logue (Holloway and Kneale 2000, 76). So, forexample, by initially making the ban temporary,and by not insisting on complete withdrawal,officials were hoping to win over industry, thinkingthat anything more would jeopardize the wholeoperation. In turn, this temporary status of the banalong with the decision not to withdraw feed hadeffects on how industry saw their interests. Itmeant that when industry representatives askedfor an extension to the period in which they coulduse pipeline feed, they did so, in part, because theyassumed that officials considered the disease anon-urgent problem (BSE INQ: Stat024C: 2). Theban’s geography was therefore not solely a matter

Indeterminacy in-decisions–science policy and politics in the BSE crisis 15

of pre-existing interests, but was also an outcomeof a dialogue and of second-guessing the other’smotives.

Most importantly for my purposes here, thisgeography was dependent on another set of dia-logically performed translations. In the midst of allthis uncertainty, the coalescence of interests wasfacilitated by the storying into existence of a stable,materially homogeneous, disease agent. As the banwas discussed, a shared understanding of diseasetransmission was produced. This was particularlyevident at a series of meetings held just as the banwas to be introduced. At a meeting of MAFFofficials and industry representatives on 1 June1988, the latter raised questions concerning theassumed aetiology of BSE. Given that the diseasehad not, at that time, been reported in other coun-tries, which nevertheless received exports of Britishproduced feed, how could feed be the cause? Thenewly appointed Chief Vet, Keith Meldrum,argued that as Britain exported relatively smallamounts of this material and that most of theexports were probably not fed to bovines, it wouldhave been unlikely for cattle abroad to havereceived sufficient material to develop the disease(BSE INQ: RFA07: 41, emphasis added). Nine dayslater, at a separate meeting, the UKRA representa-tives repeated the question, this time referring inparticular to the absence of BSE in Ireland wherethere were similarly high levels of scrapie andMBM was processed in the same way. The ChiefVet explained the apparent discrepancy by refer-ring to the amount of material consumed by cattle,saying ‘BSE was dose related and . . . Irish cattle hadprobably not had sufficient exposure for it todevelop’ (BSE INQ: RFA07, 43, emphasis added).Finally, in meetings with the Federation of FreshMeat Wholesalers and the National Cattle BreedersAssociation, both of whom had expressed con-fusion that MBM could still be incorporated intofertilisers and ingested by grazing cattle, the CVOstated again that BSE was dose-related and verylittle would be consumed in this fashion (BSE INQ:RFA07, 45).

In short, there was an assumption that, in orderfor an animal to contract the disease, ‘it had toingest a massive dose of infected material’ (MAFFanimal health expert, BSE INQ: tr980612, 146). Thisaccount of the disease was sufficient to allowofficials to explain various aspects of the ban toothers and to themselves. The continued exports,the manufacture of ruminant-free animal feed and

potentially infected feeds on the same productionlines, the period of grace and the use of MBM infertilisers – all of these made sense if the doserequired for the transmission of the disease was’massive’.

This shared understanding caused somebemusement at the Inquiry. In part this is becausethere are records of meetings, held prior to theformulation of the ban and with senior MAFFofficials present, where uncertainties over dosecharacteristics were expressed, and even where theidea that the dose of infective material could bevery small indeed was mentioned. For example, onthe 4 March 1988, John Wilesmith, the epidemiolo-gist, told a meeting of MAFF officials and industryrepresentatives that a possible transmissible agenthad been discovered, and that the effective dose ofthe disease was very small (BSE INQ tr981019: 64).Interestingly, though the meeting was chaired byKeith Meldrum, a senior vet and soon to be chiefvet at MAFF, the government have no record ofthis presentation (the minutes were supplied bythe rendering association). During the Inquiry Mr.Wilesmith has gone further to suggest that anundisclosed officialdom ‘were perfectly aware ofwhat the likely amount, that being a small amount,was necessary to infect animals’ (BSE INQ,tr980731, 15). Partly in response, Keith Meldrumhas denied that such knowledge was widespread.Citing discussions he was having at the timewith Richard Kimberlin (a well known detractorfrom the prion protein -hypothesis, see earlier),Meldrum has suggested that ‘we simply did notknow what was the dose necessary to cause dis-ease . . . or indeed the titre necessary in thatdose . . . I was not in a position to make aninformed judgement on the issue and I did notattempt to do so’ (BSE INQ: tr981019 67). In a laterhearing, Meldrum went further to suggest that thepossibility of a small dose being sufficient to trans-mit the disease ‘was not the view, the corporate viewthat we held at the time based on the advice thatwe received from the experts. We did not know.And I do not think John [Wilesmith] knew either,frankly (BSE INQ: tr991110, 107, emphasis added).

The ’corporate view’, apart from being a reflex-ive expression used in an Inquiry setting to signalthe dispersal of accountability, was one of igno-rance. And yet, in following the policy discussionsand deliberations, the idea of a massive doserequirement inhabits conversations and decisions.So how did a critical area where there was clear

Steve Hinchliffe16

scientific disagreement, and significant scientificuncertainty, develop to become a largely unques-tioned view that the required dose for transmissionwas massive? Senior vets at the Inquiry could notexplain why they had assumed such a view to bereasonable at the time. Alan Lawrence, from theanimal health division at MAFF, told the inquirythat he was confused as to how such an assump-tion could have arisen. He added, in his defence,that his understanding had followed from a broadconsultation with veterinary and administrativecolleagues (BSE INQ: Rfa07up: para 161a, andtr980612, 145).

This translation of uncertainty concerning thetransmission of a disease into an assumed materialcharacter is indeed difficult to explain. As thebemusement of Lawrence and others at the Inquiryattests, this was not a case of a simple scientificmisunderstanding. Nor does it seem likely that thiswas an elaborate and preconceived obfuscation ofthe ’facts’. Nevertheless, as I have already sug-gested, it does seem likely that the translation ofdose characteristics was politically expedient. Ithelped to anchor the coalescence of emerging inter-ests. The easiest way for MAFF officials to sell thepolicy to industry and to generate a necessarydegree of consensus was to appeal to an impartialarbiter, a knowable nature. This would save a lot oftime compared to the degree of painful explanationthat would be required to haul the policy back overthe political orderings and distributions that hadmade the decision possible. Whether or not myinterpretation is justified, or even reads as far toofunctional in itself, the effect of the dose clause wasto close down debate, lending false legitimacy topreceding decisions and distributions. It is anexample of the ability and possibly the will toshortcut due political process by referring the caseto a non-social body (see Latour 2000). In turn, itshould be remembered that the externally andimpartially conferred authority of the policy con-tributed to the production of new conditions ofpossibility for disease mobility and motility.Perhaps most significantly, the continued assump-tion of dose dependency meant that cross contami-nation between feed lines was largely ignored. Asruminant derived feed, possibly containing scrapieand BSE infected MBM, could be fed to non-British, and/or non-ruminant animals for sometime to come, there was potential for material fromone product line to cross over into another. Thisparticular danger was in fact considered in 1988,

but it was not regarded as significant given that thedisease was understood to require larger dosesthan this process could generate (see Meldrum onthis mismatch between uncertainty and action, BSEINQ stat184e). It was not until 1994 that thesignificance of feed mill cross-contamination wasaddressed.

There are two implications of this work that Iwould like to highlight. First, the indeterminaciesof natural–social relations can easily be sidelined incurrent constructions of deliberation and policyformulation. In seeking to form a consensus, themateriality of the disease was reduced to an exter-nal anchor or arbiter. This recourse to a predictableand determinate material world impeded an opendiscussion of the politics of decisions, their distri-butions and exclusions. In contrast, placing aknowing of indeterminacy in the foreground ofpolicy considerations may well have helped toimpede such a singular version of dosage, and inturn, helped to emphasize the political construc-tion of decisions. It may have also led to a morethorough questioning of the disease mappings thatrelied upon a questionable cartography of species,states and agricultural-industrial practices.

Second, in order to understand the constructionof policy, attention needs to be paid to the conduct,and more specifically, the dialogical character ofpolicy-making. Interests and understandings werenot simply brought to the discussion table. Theywere, at least in part, formed as discussionsensued. So, the final question I want to ask is this;would a wider constituency have produced abetter policy? My answer would be that extendingthe discussion and broadening the debate may wellhave introduced different concerns. Matters thatMAFF officials and industry representativestogether would have found it difficult to considermay well have made it on to agenda (includingmoral questions concerning feeding practices,increased concern for animal welfare, lay under-standings of risk and so on. See Macnaghten andUrry (1997) and Wynne (1996) for such arguments).However, this inclusion of other stakeholders, val-ues and ideas would not, in and of itself, guaranteethat the resulting policy would have succeeded.Indeed, if broader discussion, in the form of delib-erative democracy, continued to have as its aim theproduction of rational argument and impartiallysanctioned agreement, which was not mindful ofthe inevitable distributions and exclusions thatsuch agreements perform, then there would be

Indeterminacy in-decisions–science policy and politics in the BSE crisis 17

every chance that similar failings would be repro-duced. The case of the dose agreement is sympto-matic of a process that requires impartial solutionsto politically difficult problems. These are problemswhere conflict and disagreement may be besthandled by keeping them alive, rather than bury-ing them under the false hope of impartial arbitra-tion. The contention here is simply that the forgingof a policy decision through an appeal to anapparently uncontroversial material property isakin to resolving differences through ‘rationaldeliberation thanks to the adoption of an impartialstandpoint’ (Mouffe 1999a, 5). We need to recog-nize that inclusion and representation are not theonly ways of doing environmental politics. Somepeople and things will necessarily remain ’outside’,and those ’inside’ will not have their differencesand antagonisms erased. To imagine otherwise is,as I have detailed in this example, to perpetuatewhat is effectively an anti-democratic notion ofsocial and natural control.

Conclusions

Non-human geographies have recently unfastenednature from its foundational moorings and loos-ened its fixed identity, at the same time as demon-strating a ’wildness’ that is not reducible to extantsocial orders. And yet, despite some importantacademic and political interventions, environmen-tal policy making tends to work with a more staidnatural order. Even the welcome developmentsin precautionary and participatory approaches toenvironmental decisions tend to underplay thepossibility of natural indeterminacy. In short, thereremains a tendency to assume that agreement orconsensus on issues of policy can be produced byreferring the case to an existing, or, once temporaryuncertainties are banished, soon to be existing,natural object. I have demonstrated in this paperthat such objects fail to materialize in this form.Even in experimental set-ups where singular ver-sions of nature might be expected, controversiesover the materiality of TSE diseases remained. Inaddition, I have made a case that the assumedexistence of incontestable natural entities can con-tribute to environmental problems. Such objectsare a means of short-cutting due political process(Latour 2000). In the dosage case, assumed proper-ties legitimated a map or geography of the diseasethat was effectively drawn for economic and

political purposes. Moreover, this geography reliedupon cartographies of disease that bore littlerelation to the sociable mappings of BSE. Speciesand state boundaries, and the space-times ofindustrial-agricultural practices, were no match forthe mobility and motility of the disease.

In attempting to explain something of theseshortfalls in policy-making, and to evaluate policyrecommendations made in the wake of the BSEcrisis, I highlighted three questions regarding thegeographical practices, the natural realism and thespatial politics of environmental decision-making.First, by engaging in detail with a portion of thescience and policy-making that accompanied theBSE crisis I have provided an account whichtakes the situated conduct of science and of policyseriously. In following the science and policy inaction, and in particular by following some of thesocio-materialities that made up the disease, I havedrawn attention to the events that mark scienceand policy practices. In emphasizing this potentialcreativity, I have also demonstrated how experi-mental and policy systems managed to generate aform of indeterminacy that is rarely considered inpolicy debates (and was excluded early on fromthe science-led BSE debates). Rather than a tempo-rary affair, uncertainty seems an endemic aspect ofthe practices that I have followed. Indeed, byfollowing the material relations that wereco-produced during the pursuit of pure agent, theconstruction of primary properties and in theattempts to shortcut due political process (Latour2000), I have suggested that indeterminacy wasironically produced at the same moment as itsdenial.

Second, I have demonstrated that living andnon-living nature (and the boundaries betweensuch are not easily drawn) that inhabits experimen-tal and agricultural-industrial spaces, is not one ofa kind. Nor is it social in the conventional, ‘socialscience’, appropriation of the term. But it issociable. This may not be a recipe for an infinitemulti-naturalism, but it does suggest the impor-tance of ‘things’ that are able to ‘object’ to scienceand policy-making (Latour 2000), and object inways that, by definition, are open to change. Again,the emphasis of such a conclusion lies in theknowing of indeterminacy of these epistemicthings. Which is also to say, contrary to the conclu-sions of the BSE Inquiry, that our failure to get theright policies was not simply a matter of misrepre-senting the science (although that was part of it). It

Steve Hinchliffe18

was also a matter of scientists and others failing totranslate a knowing of indeterminacy into thepolitical process.

Third, precautionary and deliberative models ofdecision-making can miss the multitude of distri-butions, inclusions and exclusions, which areendemic to experimental and policy situations. Intheir appeal to externally sanctioned agreementthese political forms tend to deny the struggles toproduce policy statements and the provisionalthough important ‘crystallization of power rela-tions’ (Mouffe 1999a, 5) should such statements beaccepted. To be sure, this is not to say that thenon-agreeable matters (the human-nonhuman rela-tions that are formed and excluded in the perform-ance of a distribution, or a decision) can or shouldbe included in future decisions or agreements. Inany case, ’they’ may not even pre-exist the distri-bution or decision, making their inclusion non-sensical. Rather, and given the inevitability ofdistributions, the argument pursued here would bethat to continue the quest for impartially sanc-tioned decisions is to miss the significance oftaking decisions. It is the pursuit of closure, ratherthan simply the exclusion of voices, that is anti-democratic. Further, it is to suggest, along withWynne, that the decisionism that inhabits so muchenvironmental policy thought and practice is anti-relational and ahistorical. Whilst Wynne is refer-ring to more explicitly technical decision-makingforms than have been dealt with in this paper, adose of participative democracy and deliberativedecision-making does not, it seems to me, alter thestatement that: decisionist approaches leave ‘noroom in principle for recognising that the assumedobject of the decision may itself be a contingenthuman construct which excludes other legitimateconcerns, values and experiences – even if thesemay not be easily articulable’ (1997, 148). I wouldonly add that the material-heterogeneity and there-fore mutability of such an object may also beexcluded to our cost.

Finally, in this paper I have endeavoured tomake empirically informed theoretical contribu-tions to geographical concerns over policy rel-evance, human–nonhuman relations and thepursuit of inclusive forms of environmental poli-tics. In terms of policy debates, I have demon-strated that what may seem to be esoteric andtheoretical pursuits in academic geography arevital to certain areas of policy-making. Indeed, itcan be productive to engage political and policy

problems with something other than modes ofthought which are solely functional, and thereforelimited to a particular machinery of activity –functives as Deleuze and Guattari (1994) termthem – and that inhabit so much policy practice.The openness of epistemic things and of a knowingof indeterminacy can do some serious work inguiding policy practice (for a similar argumentcouched in a different language see Amin, Masseyand Thrift 2000). Meanwhile, and in terms ofnonhuman geographies, the paper has started tomap an alternative to the social construction/natural reality contest. I have experimented withnatures’ (plural) sociability and hence mobility andmotility to start to outline what Latour calls socialrealism (1999 2000). I have also used Latour’s(2000) sense of objectivity and Rheinberger’s (1997)epistemic things to underline the productiveness ofother than human embodiments. Rheinberger’sutilization of notions of excess has enabled me toemphasize the prospect of novelty and events inhuman–nonhuman relations. Finally, I have made astart in rejecting any simple spatial register thatseeks to include the excluded in environmentalpolitics. I have started to trace a politics andspatiality of decisions that speaks of distributions,divisions, associations, antagonisms, differences aswell as exclusions and inclusions. The result is asense of the production of a range of social andspatial relations that cannot easily be wished awaythrough an appeal to a time- or space-less logic,a universal matter or nature. Imagining thatdecisions can be anything other than fraught andcontested, or that they can be materially neutral, isto imagine a world without difference. It is also torefuse those moments when natural and socialsciences produce a knowing of indeterminacy.

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Ron Martin, John Allen, Nick Bingham,Martin Gren, Dave Featherstone and DoreenMassey and three anonymous referees for theiradvice in re-drafting this paper. Also thanks toseminar audiences at the Open University (ScienceEducation), University of Southern California,UCLA, Kings College, London and Hull and at theUniversity of Wales for listening to sometimesmuch earlier versions of this and for askingdemanding questions. Visits to the BSE Inquirywere made possible by a small research grant fromthe Geography Discipline at the Open University.

Indeterminacy in-decisions–science policy and politics in the BSE crisis 19

Notes

1 The lack of social scientific evidence is not necessarilya fault of the Inquiry team alone – there were severalopen invitations to contribute evidence to the Inquiryand I can only assume that most social scientists (withthe exception of Time Lang) did not take up theopportunity. However, in the social scientists’ (andmy) defence, the Inquiry did have an air of absolutefunctionality about it, which would have made socialscience interventions difficult to handle. I return tothis notion of functionality in later sections of thepaper.

2 The term realism is being used in a particular wayhere. Preferring to reconfigure a realist approach toenvironmental issues and/or nature is not meant toinvite accusations of idealism or voluntarism. Rather,it is meant to dispel those accounts of the natural thatimagine natural reality as something that humans donot take part in. Likewise, reality should not beconsidered as something that humans can whollydetermine. The co-production of reality, in ways thatwill rarely be characterized by an equitable share ofthe spoils, is closer to the process that I want toconvey in this paper. See Latour (1999, 2000) for anextended discussion of reality in relation to thescience studies literature.

3 I take it that Mouffe’s arguments are fairly specificallyreferring to a modern, Western version of democracyand so I am bypassing the charge that this part of herargument treats particular forms of conflict as univer-sal features of social conduct. See Massey (1995) for acritical reflection on this point.

4 Thanks to Sarah Whatmore for highlighting thisprocedural and methodological issue.

5 There is an interesting parallel between the narrativeforms and metaphorical devices that inhyabitmolecular biology and standard theories of knowl-edge and practice. The conventional understandingof ‘ideas make science make policy’ clearly inhabits asimilar informational world.

6 Rheinberger’s texts are also clear as to the role of suchexperimentation in the construction of historical andsocial knowledge forms. It is a deficit of my ownpaper that I haven’t sufficiently reflected on theprocess that led to some of the arguments beingdeveloped. I would only add that the long periods ofassembling relevant texts, following paper trails,attending Inquiry days, trying out and triangulatingarguments and drafting papers amount to somethingakin to the materially heterogeneous process thatRheinberger and others associate with scientificexperimentation.

7 The term is borrowed from Derrida, and is used toevoke ‘the temporal characteristics of any signifiyingactivity as a process without definitely assignableorigin or ground’ (Rheinberger 1997, 239).

8 Experimental social science is similarly a machine forgenerating futures. There is something to be learnedfrom experimental natural sciences in this respect.Adopting an open reding frame and allowing the‘objects’ of research to object to the trajectory ofthe research is a vital lesson (see Latou 2000). As is theability to write this research in ways that retain adegree of openness (a lesson that is even harder tolearn – thanks to Doreen Massey for pointing out thequestion-answering style that still drives many partsof this paper).

9 A similar resistance to scientific work that had con-travened Watson’s linear information flow version ofthe central dogma is evident in the early reception ofwork on reverse transcriptase, whereby virus RNAcan encode sequential information into host DNAbefore the normal sequence of replication proceeds.Such work was largely ignored according to theexperimental scientists, Howard Temin – see Keyes1999a, 7.

10 Of particular concern was rhizomania, a diseaseof sugar beet, which was considered to have nopossible link to human ill health, and therefore farm-ers had not been able to claim compensation ondestruction of the crop. If compensation was paid onBSE cases in the absence of a statement on thepotential risks to human health, then this mightprovoke framers to claim for similar treatment overrhizomania.

11 The material is being quoted from a minute of ameeting held on 18 May, following a submission byHoward Rees, then CVO, to the Minister on 6 May1988. The reference to sheepmeat may well have beena slip, as the intention seems to have been to banbovine, ovine and caprine derived material fromruminant feed. Indeed, the ban stipulated all three ata later stage (BSEINQ 991110, 23).

12 MAFF officials told members of the industry thatfailure to implement the ban could lead to anintensification of the disease, would endanger liveli-hoods and livestock and could even result in civilprosecution in the future. Regarding the latter, therewere recent well-known precedents where theindustry’s failure to act had led to civil actions thathad cost the feed manufacturers dearly. (An examplebeing the case of Newcastle Disease, see BSE INQ:tr980623 for a description of this approach frommembers of MAFF’s animal health division).

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