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This book presents a systematic analysis of how BSE policy was made in the UK and EU, 1986%# x2013; 2004. The main focus is on the role of scientific expertise, advice, and evidence in policy-making processes, and its use by officials and ministers as a political resource. The central argument is that highly political and highly problematic policy decisions were often misrepresented as based on, and only on, sound science. Those tactics required the selective highlighting of scientific uncertainties. Since many of the most crucial policy-sensitive uncertainties were concealed or discounted, research to diminish those uncertainties was not undertaken. Since the claim had been that it was impossible for BSE-contaminated food to cause a human spongiform encephalopathy, when such cases emerged in 1996, the policy-making regime was comprehensively undermined and a crisis ensued. The BSE policy saga is …