Health, Hazards and Public Debate: Lessons for Risk communication from the BSE/CJD Saga

The BSE(bovine spongiform encephalopathy) saga has made painfully evident the limitations of risk communication as a one way avenue where information to the public about the risks they face come after critical policy decisions have already been made. In fact communication has even been identified as one of the key elements of what went wrong and generated the loss of trust in government discourse and in beef in Europe. Clearly there was a need to learn from that experience and share those lessons. This challenge was taken up by the WHO and a group of European scholars, with the support of DG Research.