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Mad-cow money: making big profits off of Mad Cow Disease is not just a load of bull

National Review, May 20, 1996 by Christopher Fildes

Making big profits off of Mad Cow Disease is not just a load of bull.

Most cows are quite sane. They have the herd instinct, but so have markets. They can be panicked, but so can politicians. They can be milked, but so can taxpayers. That is the way to bet. Mad Cow Disease must offer splendid opportunities for making money.

In Europe, the market was mad long before the cows were. The prices of cows and of their products, and even their right to exist, were and are governed by a Common Agricultural Policy, which subsidizes beef production to the tune of $6 billion a year. The Mad Cow Disease commotion will add billions to the bill. It can only end in slaughter -- the extermination of cows who, on the faintest evidence or none, might be suspected of spreading the disease.

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Britain's farming minister, a Mr. Hogg, talks of culling 25,000 cows a week, indefinitely. Some would lead a posthumous existence in cold storage, and some would be buried at sea. All that remains to be seen is who pays, and how much. The British taxpayer? The European taxpayer? The British again, in their unwelcome capacity as paymaster of European policies? What matters is to be on the receiving end, and here are some helpful suggestions.

Cow power: Mad cows could generate electricity. A company called Fibrowatt with two power stations now burns 300,000 tons of "chicken waste" a year, and its managing director, Rupert Fraser, is ready to extend the principle to cows. As a renewable non-fossil fuel they would be ecologically correct, like tides or windmills. A cow-powered station, Mr. Fraser says, would need heavy government backing. This phrase means the same as "more public funding": see below, under "More research is needed."

Sanity clauses: For a small additional premium, insurance companies could offer a sanity clause, as pioneered by Groucho Marx in A Night at the Opera. The policy would pay out if the holder caught the disease and went mad. With the chances so remote, any competent actuary could set the premium at a level that would make it highly profitable. Burger bars could offer it to their customers as an incentive. This policy would not be binding in the state of California, where the courts believe that all insurance companies have red robes and cotton-wool whiskers. As Groucho had to be reminded, there ain't no Sanity Clause.

Feathered friends: You cannot catch Mad Cow Disease from an ostrich. This is a bad reason for buying an ostrich but helps if you are selling them, and ostrich schemes are the fad of the moment. Just send in your money, the promoters say, and for $10,000 this ostrich will be yours. Then it will lay eggs, and the chicks will grow up to be made into ostrich steaks, the healthy alternative to beef. This could earn 33 per cent on your money, or 66 per cent, or the number you first thought of. Large sums have been sucked into these ostrich schemes, though the biggest scheme of all turns out, predictably enough, to be clean out of money and seriously short of ostriches. So if you insist on running a promotion of this kind, I recommend a change of livestock: try llamas.

More research is needed: Of all the ways to profit from Mad Cow Disease, this one is absolutely copper-bottomed. Just start with a rundown biology lab attached to some needy university. Then get it a new brass plate which calls it the Institute of Bovine Cerebellar Research. Be sure to leave room on the brass plate for the names of benefactors. Then go out and hustle. If you cannot land a remunerative research grant in today's market, you do not deserve to succeed. Never claim to have the cure. What your scientists have made is a breakthrough, which may enable them under controlled conditions to isolate a chromosomic particle associated with madness in field mice. Above all, don't say there is nothing to worry about. Remember your mantra: More research is needed and more public funding -- that is to say, more of other people's money, paid to you.

Rawhide: Try this simple sum: If 25,000 extra cows a week are going to the great green pastures, what have you got 25,000 more of? That's it: cowhides. So what should the price of hides do? It should fall. And will it? You don't know? Quite right. You don't know if the skinners and tanners have already seen you coming and sold short, or whether some futures trader in Chicago has cowhide prices in a bind because this is his way into soya and silver. These futures markets are for the professionals. Save your money and spend it on a cut-price leather watch strap from Mark Cross or Gucci.

The rustle of spring: To add value to a cow, try smuggling it across a border. Most of Britain's frontiers are maritime, but a British cow (well, a United Kingdom cow) could wander over and become an Irish cow, free from the vexing Euro-restrictions that have kept it out of the world's markets. It might well meet an Irish cow coming the other way to take advantage of the guaranteed price and market that a cull would provide. Butter has shuttled across this frontier for years. Guns, too, of course.

Mad-cow money: making big profits off of Mad Cow Disease is not just a load of bull

National Review, May 20, 1996 by Christopher Fildes

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