Volume 1: Findings and Conclusions
Executive Summary of the Report of the Inquiry
Introduction

By our terms of reference, we have been required:

To establish and review the history of the emergence and identification of BSE and variant CJD in the United Kingdom, and of the action taken in response to it up to 20 March 1996; to reach conclusions on the adequacy of that response, taking into account the state of knowledge at the time; and to report on these matters to the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, the Secretary of State for Health and the Secretaries of State for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

In this Executive Summary, we give an overview of our key findings and conclusions. We refer to things that went right as well as to some of the errors, inadequacies and shortcomings that we have identified in the response to BSE. We do not attempt here to explain or even list all of these. In particular we do not explain the criticisms of individuals that appear in our Report. These need as a matter of fairness to be read in their proper context, as we explain at paragraph 30 of this volume.