Napoleonic Newsdesk

Waterloo & Mad Cow Disease


There had to be a link somehow, and now I can tell you the truth about this topic that seems to fill the pages of other publications in the country! Mad Cow Disease in Britain has been caused by the bones of soldiers and horses from Napoleonic battlefields!

This little gem of news I read about in The Times recently. It is a brief report of an article in a satirical French weekly (Le Canard Enchaine) that relates how Victor Hugo wrote a tome entitled Things Observed 1847-1848, in which he observed that millions of bushels of bones, both human and animal, were dug from the battlefields of Austerlitz, Leipzig and Waterloo during the nineteenth century and shipped to Britain. They arrived in Yorkshire and were ground into a powder before being used as fertiliser in the English countryside.

The article states that at last the true origin of BSE has been revealed! Well, according to this particular French weekly that is. I read this story in The Times, whose Paris Correspondent read it in a French publication, who got the story from Victor Hugo, so it must be true!

Here's a thought. E BSE in Britain came from bones on the continent in the first place, then it's a bit much them not wanting our beef, isn't it! ! !

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