By The BBC has an excellent article today that destroys the Korean left’s complaints against US beef:
Some of the claims made about the risks of mad cow disease are certainly difficult to substantiate.
South Korea’s marching citizens have been worried onto the streets by widely circulated rumours that American consumers do not eat beef from cattle aged over 30 months, and that large quantities of this more dangerous, older meat will flood into Korea.
It was with reference to these fears that the South Korean government suspended the import agreement this week, saying it wanted 30-month and older cattle removed from the deal.
But according to statistics from the US beef industry, 18% of cattle slaughtered in the US for human consumption is above, in many cases well above, 30 months of age.
The meat from these animals, considered perfectly safe, is ground into beef for burgers and other such delights.
Americans, it seems, don’t just eat 30-month-old cows, they eat them in vast quantities.
And according to Joe Schuele from the US National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, “research shows that before exports were stopped in 2003, less than 2% of the total beef we sent to South Korea came from cattle aged over 30 months”.
Oh it only gets better:
But central to the South Korean government’s willingness to open its ports is the certification of US beef hygiene standards by the World Organisation for Animal Health.
According to this intergovernmental food-safety body, the US removes risky material from slaughtered animals, conducts adequate testing and has feed policies that control the risk and make its meat safe for export.
South Korea has yet to supply enough information to the World Organisation for Animal Health to allow an assessment of its own mad cow risk to be carried out.
I have been saying all this for the past week, US beef is safter then Korean beef. It is an indisputable fact that means little to these people. Notice this is the most detail in any article by a western news agency about this issue and also notice it is not written by a Korean correspondent like other western news agency articles.
For those who continue to say this is not about anti-Americanism I give you this:
“The essence of the beef protests is anti-American,” says Keun Park, President of the Korea-America Friendship Society.
“The left-wing media has instigated the feeling that there is a good reason to fear US beef.”
Here is the response from the leftists behind the protests:
Hahm Sung-deuk, professor of presidential studies at Korea University, does not agree that the beef protests are motivated by anti-American sentiment, but he admitted that outsiders may well be baffled as to why it has become such a serious issue.
“People have become gradually disappointed with President Lee,” he says. “There have been a series of errors.”
One of the biggest ones, he said, was to give the appearance of capitulating to American political interests.
So these protests are because of the “appearance of capitulating to American political interests” even though it is an indisputable fact that the complaints against President Lee are false and the FTA is in the best interests of Korea. Where was Hahm Sung-deuk when Korea capitulated to Chinese political interests during the Great Garlic War? The sheer hypocrisy of the Korean left just further proves this is about anti-Americanism.
Here is my favorite quote from the article from the one man show of Lee Sae-jin:
Not all South Koreans agree with the candlelit protesters who continue to march through the streets of Seoul each night.
Lee Sae Jin, a 25 year old university student, bravely held his own, one-man protest in favour of US beef imports.
He was soon shepherded away by a policeman, led off through the rather angry crowd that had gathered to read his posters.
“We are an exporting nation,” he had written.
“We are creating the fear of mad cow disease in our own minds. Candlelights should be used to brighten the darkness, not burn down our own homes.”
Lee Sae-jin is the man. He is only one person but I know plenty of Koreans that think just like him but they don’t want to protest because they have things to do like work their jobs unlike the college students and professional leftist agitators behind these protests.
If anyone knows who Lee Sae-jin, they should buy him the biggest US steak available on the blackmarket.
8:13 pm on June 5th, 2008 1
[...] BBC and Lee Sae-jin Bring Truth to US Beef Issue on June 5, 2008 at 6:03 [...]
10:23 pm on June 5th, 2008 2
Imagine the Mega-Blockbuster movie that is going to sweep Korea in about 2 years about the US Beef that infected the elementary student (the one that didn’t go to college, get a good job, then just die)with the Mad Cow-hiv and turned him into the greatest super hero the Asian continent has ever seen…4 Brain Cell Boy!!!!
He’ll have twice the soju consumption capacity of the average Korean male and be twice as smart with all those extra brain cells!!!
(I’m totally suing the plagurizing mofo Korean directer that steals my idea)
10:44 pm on June 5th, 2008 3
[...] local by-elections, with 23 going to the opposition. And, protests are getting more violent. Still, the fear, mistranslations, and crazy science circulating around Korea (and yesterday I had to listen to a pair of my own students butcher their own English final trying [...]
11:17 pm on June 5th, 2008 4
A fair article from the BBC, and you will notice the last name of the writer wasn’t Kim, Lee, Bong, Park or Choi. You can’t trust the Korean writers to tell the truth about Korea.
Lee Sae-jin isn’t a hero, he just isnt as retarded as his US flag buring ethnic brothers. His perspecitive is that Korea must export, and so they should not piss of a huge trading partner whom Korea dumps its junk off on. He is more dangerous then the average protester. The average protester, makes his hatred for the USA clear. He hates the USA and wants to dump Korean junk there.
No thank you lee sae jin, and your “one man” fake protest.
11:20 pm on June 5th, 2008 5
By the way, I predict that other newspapers will pick up on this idiot lee sae jin and talk about him as if “not all” Koreans are anti-American protesters. As if one person, just one, is realistic proof. Look for Onishi to write it.
12:36 am on June 6th, 2008 6
They should import the beef, and let the consumers decide. Whenever I go to Korea, the last thing I eat is beef, because it can be as expensive as a bottle of imported wine (which gets taxed quite heavily), and I’m not talking about kobe beef either.
These protests are motivated by both questionable intentions and nurtured through the distribution of ridiculous propaganda, at which South Korean NGO’s of the left-wing variety often times excel. After all, they were educated by such propaganda.
I ultimately blame Kim Dae Jung for legalizing many of these extreme left-wing NGO’s which continue to pose hurdles to the policies of both the mainstream right and the mainstream center-left in South Korea.
The worst problem of all from a macro perspective is that such left-wing thinking is often motivated by insular, or inward-looking, approach to South Korean national direction and policy. These protests are a nuisance to not only the US-ROK alliance, but most noticeably harm South Korea’s national interests.
There are many South Koreans who realize this, but they often times spend their evenings and weekends looking after their families, instead of flipping police buses while mentally floating about in lefty/commie wonderland.
6:44 am on June 6th, 2008 7
Leave it to Shattered to find the anti-Korean angle of the Lee Sae-jin story. Has there ever been a Korean you like?
MH, the problem with letting the consumer decide is that in Korea everyone knows how corrupt their food inspection system is and that all the restaurants will buy US beef and claim it is Korean beef and charge Korean beef prices like they do right now with blackmarketed beef from US military installations.
I do agree that these extreme left wing NGOs do skew people’s opinions of Korea because normal people cannot be professional protesters every day because like you said they have families and jobs.
9:00 am on June 6th, 2008 8
Lee Sae Jin reminds me of the honorable scholar who risks his life to properly advise a corrupt Korean King (and there were many of those) influenced by a bunch of powerful cronies. Usually the king didn’t care for what he has to say so he sends him on an exile to a remote island somewhere or even executes him.
The king drinks and hunts and sight sees some more until the Japanese / Silla / Ming outside forces rape the country. “Oh CRAP I should have thought for myself listened to that guy I just decapitated. OOPS”
10:56 am on June 6th, 2008 9
“Leave it to Shattered to find the anti-Korean angle of the Lee Sae-jin story. Has there ever been a Korean you like?”
LOL, I am usually right about these things, so lets see if I am. I noticed that a few K-Bloggers were ready to canonize the guy. The author of the article and the k-blogger are just trying to seek balance in their discussion of this topic. That is admirable, but misguided in this case. I am just looking at the facts.
Keun Park seems like a straight shooter.
2:30 pm on June 6th, 2008 10
I think Lee sae jin has a much greater chance of being badly beaten or at least have his house covered in feces than becoming a SK hero. Whisle blowers do not fare well in SK if they go against the masses. I hope he takes good care of himself and doesn’t take any more risks.
12:19 pm on June 7th, 2008 11
EU lifts ban on prime T-bone
http://www.theflorentine.net/articles/article-view.asp?issuetocId=3121
12:31 pm on June 7th, 2008 12
US Expands Canadian Cattle Imports
Friday, September 14, 2007
WASHINGTON —
Canadian cattle over 30 months of age will be allowed into the U.S. market starting Nov. 19, the Agriculture Department said Friday in expanding its policy on mad cow disease.
In May 2003, the discovery of an Alberta cow with mad cow disease caused the United States to slam the border shut to cattle imports from Canada.
The border between the world’s largest trade partners reopened for Canadian beef from younger cattle within months of the original ban. Live cattle under the age of 30 months have been allowed to move across the border since July 2005.
Bruce Knight, undersecretary for marketing and regulatory programs, said the change is firmly based in science and ensures that U.S. regulators will protect the country against the disease.
Eating meat products contaminated with mad cow disease, known scientifically as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, has been linked to more than 150 human deaths, mostly in Britain, from variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.
There have been three cases of mad cow disease in the U.S. The first, in December 2003 in Washington state, was in a cow that had been imported from Canada. The second, in 2005, was in a Texas-born cow. The third was confirmed last year in an Alabama cow. There have been 10 cases of mad cow disease in Canada.
Copyright 2007 The Associated Press.
http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_wires/2007Sep14/0,4675,USCanadaMadCow,00.html
12:34 pm on June 7th, 2008 13
EU relaxes rules on backbones in T-bone steak
Tue Apr 22, 2008 6:24am ET
BRUSSELS (Reuters) – The European Union has agreed to further relax food safety rules on T-bone steaks that were first imposed due to fears over mad cow disease, the European Commission said on Tuesday.
Sales of beef containing the backbone of animals aged over 12 months were banned in 2001 in many European countries to reduce the risk of catching the human equivalent of BSE, mad cow disease. This low age limit effectively outlawed T-bone steaks.
“The European Commission adopted a regulation that will raise the age limit at which the vertebral column must be removed from beef from 24 to 30 months,” one official at the European Commission said.
“This is a further reflection of the progress that Europe has made in the battle against BSE,” she said, referring to bovine spongiform encephalopathy: the brain-wasting disease that is believed to cause a similar deadly condition in humans.
The cow’s vertebral column is thought to be particularly dangerous because concentrations of BSE-causing agents have normally been found in nervous tissue rather than muscle.
Perhaps the most famous victim of the EU’s mad cow ban was Italy’s phonebook-thick Fiorentina steak, cut from cattle aged between 17 and 22 months and including a big piece of backbone.
The decision is expected to be published in the coming days in the EU’s Official Journal and enter into force shortly afterwards, officials said.
(Reporting by Jeremy Smith; Editing by Dale Hudson and Peter Blackburn)
http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=healthNews&storyID=2008-04-22T112358Z_01_L22825002_RTRUKOC_0_US-EU-BEEF.xml&WTmodLoc=NewsHome-C3-healthNews-2
12:38 pm on June 7th, 2008 14
Korean beefs from cows around 30 months old..
http://tvpot.daum.net/clip/ClipView.do?clipid=5613155
12:44 pm on June 7th, 2008 15
[...] : http://rokdrop.com/2008/06/05/bbc-and-lee-sae-jin-bring-truth-to-us-beef-issue/ [...]
1:00 pm on June 7th, 2008 16
It is Lee Myungbak’s (SK Pres) problem. He is crazy. Japan doesn’t allow American meat from over 24 month old cattle but Lee took the U.S’s suggestion to import over 30 mths old their meat. This guy is a jerk. Why did he take it?
1:10 pm on June 7th, 2008 17
US-Japan Agreements on beef imports: A case of successful
http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/aer771/aer771n.pdf
4:37 am on June 8th, 2008 18
North Korea requests BSE cull beef
The North Korean Government has reportedly asked to receive European beef slaughtered in line with BSE controls, to feed its starving people.
Korean newspapers are reporting that the government in the north has asked for beef from Germany – which has found mad cow disease in its herd – and Switzerland.
Julie Doyle has the details.
Julie Doyle: The news that North Korea has requested beef from cattle slaughtered because of BSE, has sparked debate about the ethics of shipping meat considered unfit for human consumption in Europe, to starving North Koreans. The North Korean government is reported to have asked for beef from 200,000 cattle to be slaughtered in Germany and 40,000 in Switzerland. It’s been suggested such a move would also help to ease German and Swiss concerns about the safety of their beef. A staff member from one of the local charitable groups in North Korea has been quoted as saying even if the beef is infected with BSE it might be better for North Koreans to eat the meat and live longer than die immediately from hunger.
Monday, 26/02/01
http://www.abc.net.au/rural/news/stories/s251697.htm
1:41 am on June 11th, 2008 19
You were right again Shattered!!!
chosun ilbo.
A Lone Protest Against the Protests, by Kim Dae-joong
And Donga,
http://english.donga.com/srv/service.php3?bicode=100000&biid=2008060928728
10:24 pm on June 12th, 2008 20
[...] what has started out as a one man protest against the blatant anti-Americanism of the US beef protests has now gained a few more members to [...]
1:46 am on June 18th, 2008 21
[...] on Camp Red Cloud. That makes 15 DUIs in the past 14 months which is not good. With the current US beef hysteria, an accident by one of these idiots driving drunk killing someone would give the anti-US groups the [...]
10:44 am on June 27th, 2008 22
[...] War and how would you expect people in Korea to memorialize the outbreak of the Korean War? By protesting US beef of course! Courtesy of a reader tip come these photos of the anti-US beef protesters violently [...]
10:21 am on July 6th, 2008 23
[...] they had no idea. Apparently their knowledge of movies is about is good as their knowledge of the science of mad cow disease it [...]
5:12 am on July 28th, 2008 24
[...] to read the rest from Korea Beat, but I for one would love the hear how PD Diary came about their highly flawed mad cow story that set off the Cows Gone Wild [...]
1:39 pm on December 8th, 2008 25
[...] Here is mine, Lee Sae-jin. [...]