Or angry, at the very least. And wouldn’t you be? After ten long years of taking testing samples from the brains of 21 million cattle in Germany for BSE, scientists have concluded that mad-cow disease maybe sort of never took hold here after all.

But the war must go on. Why is hard to say, but it must. Sicher ist sicher ist sicher (it’s better to be safe than sorry) already. And what’s €150 million a year for a danger to consumers that , uh, hasn’t been a danger to consmers for many years now, if ever at all?

Or as one pissed off medical specialist said: “That is more than twice the budget that all university hospitals have at their disposal for diagnosing infections in their patients.”

Since news of the disease reached Germany, some 15,355 cattle have been killed in so-called stock and cohort culling. All of 12 animals sick with BSE were discovered at German slaughterhouses with the help of rapid tests. The last case was diagnosed five years ago.