IN all the acres of print following the BSE Phillips report whitewash (no one is to blame, they were well-intentioned and so on), no one seems to have grasped the real scandal.

It is that governments, including the present New Labour one, come to office on the democratic endorsement of the people and then continue to treat the state as the servant of big business.

It is true that no one intentionally wanted to poison people. But they were prepared to risk doing so in order to protect the interests of the agribusiness lobby and their shareholders.

Business has always had favourable access to government. Where you and I have to see our MPs in their surgeries in the usually vain hope that they can do little other than write letters on our behalf, the door to the Whitehall corridors of power are always open to business.

The BSE scandal is a failure of our political culture that does not take the democratic mandate seriously. Elected governments are supposed to represent the people.

We may be just consumers and resources to business that will wish to exploit us to their best advantage but we have a right to expect our democratically - elected governments to be on our side. We are not part of the USA yet!

PETER NIELSEN, Worcester.