"We Don't Like The FDA," chant thousands of demonstrators in candlelight vigils, some dressed as cows.
"Mad Cow, You Eat It!"
"Send Mad Cow To The Presidential Office!"
A scene from the National Mall? San Francisco?
No the nightly rallies are in Seoul and 22 other South Korean cities to protest ratification of the pending US/South Korea free trade agreement, KORUS FTA.
The agreement, drafted a year ago but not yet signed, would boost two-way trade between the nations to $98 billion a year from $78 under the condition that South Korea lift almost all restrictions on US beef, including the age of butchered cattle.
KORUS FTA is considered the most significant event in South Korea-US relations since the 1953 military accord and was punctuated by a visit last month from newly elected South Korean President Lee Myung-Bak to Camp David where no South Korean president has been invited. Lee is a pro-American conservative, unlike his predecessor Roh Moo-hyun who was elected on an anti-American platform.
While the FTA delivers on Lee's pledge to double South Korea's wealth if elected and lets the US rebuild its Asian beef trade obliterated by a mad cow scare five years ago--especially exports to China and Japan--many in South Korea are saying, "You want us to import WHAT"?
Because South Korean cuisine, "includes cow bones and intestines that are believed to have a higher concentration of prions," writes Cho Jin-seo in South Korea Times, South Koreans feel they are at greater risk for Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD) if the beef is infected with mad cow disease.
They interpret the agreement's prohibition of, "the use of the entire carcass of cattle not inspected and passed for human consumption, unless the cattle are less than 30 months of age, or the brains and spinal cords have been removed," to mean meat from cattle under 30 months old or stripped of the high-risk materials will be uninspected.
Gruesome TV programs featuring cows being slaughtered and a report by a professor of medicine at Hallym University on MBC that South Koreans are genetically more vulnerable to vCJD--which other scientists refuted--have fanned the flames. So have Internet based rumors that cosmetics, diapers, sanitary napkins and noodles contain cow tissue and are contaminated.
Until the discovery of mad cow disease in the US in 2003, South Korea was the third largest importer of US beef, spending $850 million year. It eased the ban in 2006 only to find backbones, a banned substance, lurking in the beef and reban it (see: Charlie Brown; football) impounding 5,300 tons. Now the meat, which has been in storage, is rumored to soon be released. Will it be billed as fresh?
Of course there are other dangerous meats in the South Korean diet. No hygiene regulations govern the millions of dogs slaughtered for food each year says the Herald Sun, because they are not considered livestock.
But that doesn't mean worries about US beef are unfounded.
Eight people have died from probable Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in the US in the last nine months including Connie Albert of Lincoln, IL and Roger Leon Dalton of Willis, VA in Aug. 2007; Roland Lacey and Ray Norris--who lived within three miles of each other near Stanton, DE--and a 79-year-old woman in Milwaukee, WI all in Dec. 2007; a 53-year-old man in Colby, KS in Jan. 2008, a former meat worker, Aretha Vinson of Portsmouth, VA in April and Bob McCord of Burbank, CA in May.
WIVB TV in Buffalo, NY even reported that former Mayor Jimmy Griffin died of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease in May but the story was removed as quickly as it appeared with only headlines remaining on the Internet.
Maybe they fear that with all the hormones dumped in the living animals to make them more profitable quicker the eaters of same will go the same way as we Americans, so they'd be permitting the same mayhem of letting aliens ride rough-shod over them as we do. Maybe we should have drawn the line long ago.
But then it's never too late to start.
by
amazin (32 articles, 0 quicklinks, 11 diaries, 396 comments)
on Friday, June 13, 2008 at 12:14:41 PM
Following the nonsense information about nutrition fed to us by the government/medical complex I switched to vegetarianism. I've never been more unhealthy in my life. I've since gone back to eating meat. Grass fed beef is the answer (or meat from other animals eating what they do in nature). More Omega 3 fatty acids than alaskan fish and CLA to boot. Proten is the center of every meal I eat and amazingly enough the pounds just keep melting off. Basically I've come to the conclusion that doing the opposite of what the talking heads recommend is best. Oh and by the way Mad Cow is non existant in cows that are grazed naturally on grass rather than being fed oats, wheat, cardboard and parts of other cows. Wow, seems that they, like us, are effected by what they eat.
by
Ro Bo (0 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 9 comments)
on Friday, June 13, 2008 at 12:16:33 PM
Thank you for bringing this up, Ro Bo! Vegetarianism is a wonderful alternative for many people--but not everyone does well on it! People whose ancestors lived in cold northerly climates, like Korea, didn't have fresh vegetables for half the year and adapted to a diet high in animal protein. Asking them to change all of a sudden to a diet more typical of equatorial regions is unrealistic. Plants affect our body chemistry in complicated ways. The Mongolians and Koreans are closely related. Mongolia embraced Buddhism but rejected the concomittant vegetarianism as a folly.
This is what people need to know in order to understand why the protests are so vehement in Korea. When you monkey with people's food sources, you are monkeying with their lives. It is shocking how oblivious Americans are to this.
In contrast, in Japan, which also took up Buddhism about 1500 years ago, the push for vegetarianism was semi-successful. They gave up 4-footed animals, but continued eating a lot of fish (pollution of which is now a real problem). Therefore they have traditionally eaten little meat and the current concerns over BSE leave them clicking their tongues in scorn. After several years of rejecting US beef, they have quietly reintroduced it this year. I don't buy it. It's probably mostly being consumed at restaurants where customers are unaware of the origin of the food. Even if we assume the BSE problem has been solved (and there is no reason to assume that), I do not want to support factory farming for health and ethical reasons. I applaud the Koreans for protesting.
(Japanese beef, BTW, also has the possibility of BSE and a coverup. They were using tainted feed. The mayor of my town reportedly proposed an incinerator to get rid of evidence in case the problem arose.)
by
Patricia 0rmsby (3 articles, 5 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 133 comments)
on Friday, June 13, 2008 at 7:41:02 PM
4 comments
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