Mad Cow Disease cover-up: Mum exposed toxic beef conspiracy after son died in agony

During his final lucid moments Andrew Black looked up at his mother with violet eyes and begged her: “Find out who did this to me.”

Three years earlier, Andrew was a ­promising radio and TV producer, but by the time he died in his mother’s arms he was bedbound, blind and unable to remember anything before his illness.

Andrew would this week have celebrated his 30th birthday.

Instead he was killed by vCJD – the human form of mad cow disease BSE – when he was just 24 years old.

Mum Christine Lord vowed to honour her son’s dying wish, channelling her grief into a five-year investigation to uncover what the Government knew about BSE and when.

Her findings exposing an apparent cover up are published this week in her book, Who Killed My Son?

Christine says: “Watching Andrew die was the worst pain I have ever experienced in my life and it never goes away. It will be with me to the end of my days.

“You don’t get over losing a child to something as horrendous as that.

"It has cast a shadow over every happy memory I have of Andrew, because I look at the photographs and wonder if that Christmas or birthday was the day he was infected.”

Christine was appalled by what she found. Documents showed the ­Government was warned to cull cattle as early as 1988 amid fears BSE could spread to and kill humans.

Meanwhile sources, many of whom were too scared to speak out publicly, told ­Christine infected cattle were smuggled into abattoirs at night.

And scientists in the know began boycotting beef during the late 1980s – even though the Government was still telling the public it was safe to eat.

Andrew was a toddler when the first cattle collapsed and died 30 miles away at Pitsham Farm in West Sussex in the winter of 1984.

The BSE outbreak was caused by contaminated feed and spread across the country, eventually forcing the cull of 4.4 million cattle.

Although ­ministers insisted there was no threat to people, Christine decided to boycott beef for good when Andrew was five.

Her younger daughter Emma, 23, has never ­knowingly eaten beef.

Bright: Andrew Black as a schoolboy

Adam Gerrard

Christine says: “As a teenager he saw vCJD on the news and asked, ‘Will that happen to me?’

"I said no, we’re safe because we hadn’t eaten beef for years. How wrong I was.”

It wasn’t until years later that Christine discovered beef products were hidden in everything from chicken pie to baby rusks, from school dinners to vital vaccines.

She says: “Andrew had a right to safe food and medicine like everyone else. We were all duped and fed toxic material for over a decade.

“Infected cattle become anxious, their eyes rolling back in their heads as they become blind and demented. They can’t eat or move. Humans suffer the same symptoms.”

The first signs Andrew was infected emerged in December 2004 – three years to the day before he died.

He had been working for radio station talkSPORT in London, but headed home to ­Portsmouth, Hants, for Christmas and tearfully told his mum he did not want to go back.

“He seemed very vulnerable and lacking in confidence, which was totally unlike my son,” says Christine.

Soon Andrew’s freelance work dried up and he spent more time at home, where his condition and confidence continued to deteriorate as the disease attacked his brain.

“One day Emma came home from college and found Andrew staring at a tin opener and a can of soup,” says Christine.

“He didn’t know what to do. Even when she opened it, he didn’t know how to pour it.

"This was a boy who ran three radio desks through the night during 9/11 when he was just 17 years old.”

Doctors suspected depression but eventually diagnosed him with variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease on May 30, 2007.

Heartbroken but determined to shoulder the burden, Christine shielded Andrew from the horrifying truth and told him he had a serious but curable illness.