Animal Pharm

‘Next to weapons of mass destruction, BSE or Mad Cow Disease was the Blair government’s biggest scare. Mark Purdey’s inves 5{, required reading.’- John Pilger’If Purdey is right, he deserves a Nobel Prize for medicine. Instead he has been shot at, his phone lines have been cut and his house has been burnt down. The Ministry of Agriculture, which for 50 years has enjoyed a dangerously close relationship with the agrochemical industry, has repeatedly sought to discredit him.’ - George Monbiot

Mark Purdey, born in 1953, turned down a university place to start his own organic farm at the age of 19. In the late 1980s he started to teach himself neurobiology and in the mid-1990s began worldwide field research to discover the truth behind BSE, CJD and other neurodegenerative diseases. He was a vociferous campaigner on these issues making TV programmes, publishing articles in peer-reviewed journals and lecturing at many prestigious institutions. He died in November 2006 of a brain tumour and is survived by his wife and eight children.