Even when she opened it, he didn’t know how to pour it. “One day Emma came home from college and found Andrew staring at a tin opener and a can of soup,” 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. “He seemed very vulnerable and lacking in confidence, which was totally unlike my son,” says Christine. 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. The first signs Andrew was infected emerged in December 2004 – three years to the day before he died. “Infected cattle become anxious, their eyes rolling back in their heads as they become blind and demented. We were all duped and fed toxic material for over a decade. She says: “Andrew had a right to safe food and medicine like everyone else. 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. "I said no, we’re safe because we hadn’t eaten beef for years. Her younger daughter Emma, 23, has never knowingly eaten beef.Ĭhristine says: “As a teenager he saw vCJD on the news and asked, ‘Will that happen to me?’ The BSE outbreak was caused by contaminated feed and spread across the country, eventually forcing the cull of 4.4 million cattle.Īlthough ministers insisted there was no threat to people, Christine decided to boycott beef for good when Andrew was five. Meanwhile sources, many of whom were too scared to speak out publicly, told Christine infected cattle were smuggled into abattoirs at night.Īnd 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.Īndrew was a toddler when the first cattle collapsed and died 30 miles away at Pitsham Farm in West Sussex in the winter of 1984. Documents showed the Government was warned to cull cattle as early as 1988 amid fears BSE could spread to and kill humans. "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.”Ĭhristine was appalled by what she found. “You don’t get over losing a child to something as horrendous as that. It will be with me to the end of my days. Her findings exposing an apparent cover up are published this week in her book, Who Killed My Son?Ĭhristine says: “Watching Andrew die was the worst pain I have ever experienced in my life and it never goes away. 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. Instead he was killed by vCJD – the human form of mad cow disease BSE – when he was just 24 years old. 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.Īndrew would this week have celebrated his 30th birthday. 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.”
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