On the ground in Northern Ireland in the early nineties, the Cook Report discovered the Provisional IRA’s hugely profitable trade in a banned drug called clenbuterol. Farmers had begun to use it to boost the weight and therefore the value of their beef cattle - as much as £300 per animal. But whoever ate the tainted meat ran a serious health risk. In Spain, there had already been two thousand cases of clenbuterol poisoning which had caused permanent heart damage and life-threatening increases in heart rate and blood pressure. As quick here to spot a potential easy profit as they had previously been with the building industry, the IRA moved in on the distribution of clenbuterol, ignoring the potentially fatal consequences for consumers. By 1991, they were making so much money selling it to farmers that they had virtually ceased robbing banks.
One of the main suppliers of clenbuterol to the Irish market was a man called Wynand de Bruyn, who ran an outwardly legitimate wholesale chemical business near Breda in Holland. His supplies, which were smuggled in from Argentina, were worth £80 million a year. The Cook Report team tracked him down - and were promptly attacked by de Bryun - a giant of a man - and his equally massive son. The crew were badly beaten up and £25,000 worth of camera was destroyed. But we had our evidence, and then the police moved in.
Next to confront was a farmer in Northern Ireland. Derek Sawyers had convictions for using and dealing in clenbuterol. He and his son tried unsuccessfully to overturn the crew car with a fork lift truck and Sawyers senior then produced a 12-bore shotgun which fortunately jammed. He then smashed the windscreen with it. It was a close call.
The Cook Report also had samples of meat bought across Ulster tested for clenbuterol. Meat from Northern Ireland’s leading supermarket chain was shown to have a clenbuterol level which was several times the known safe limit and was withdrawn. So how had the drug got into the retail chain? The programme discovered that Northern Ireland’s unique computerised monitoring system for cattle was being routinely sabotaged by a handful of dishonest slaughterhouses. By day, they processed the cattle according to the rules. Then, by night and with the computer switched off, the bad boys arrived with their truckloads of clenbuterol-dosed animals. Agriculture officials who tried to intervene were attacked. Getting to grips with the situation was going to require much tougher action than was then proposed by the authorities. Some farmers continued to use clenbuterol and there were prosecutions for doing so as recently as 2017.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Roger Cook Reports
This is an independent, not for profit channel celebrating the pioneering investigative work of The Cook Report, its presenter Roger Cook and the team behind him. Nothing like his series was made before or has been made since.
Unfortunately, the entire Cook Report archive was destroyed in a fire at a London data storage facility in 2006, and we would therefore like your help
We have acquired most of these episodes unofficially by reaching out to the Great British public. So some of what we’ve found is not the best technical quality and we don’t have the copyright, which belongs to ITV. Do you have any old Cook Report programmes in your VHS collection? If so, we would appreciate it if you would allow us to digitise and share them on the channel. Thanks in advance! Email: rogercookreports@gmail.com
Please LIKE and SUBSCRIBE for the latest content from Roger Cook Reports.
Website: rogercookreports.com (coming soon)
Facebook: / rogercookreports
Twitter: / rogercookreport