1,458 Meat Cows Possibly Contaminated from Radioactive Rice Hay Have Already Been Sold

Now the case of radioactive rice hay and radioactive beef has blown wide open. First it was only a couple, then a few hundreds, then many hundreds, now it is way over thousand and counting.

It looks more and more like the Minamata mercury poisoning, except this time, it's nationwide.

Yomiuri Shinbun (1:33AM JST 7/21/2011):

高濃度の放射性セシウムに汚染された稲わらが肉牛に与えられていた問題で、岩手、秋田、新潟、群馬、静岡、岐阜の６県は２０日、各県内の畜産農家が汚染の疑いのある稲わらを肉牛に与え、６３７頭を出荷していたと発表した。

6 prefectures announced on July 20 that the cattle farmers in their prefectures had shipped the total of 637 meat cows fed with the rice hay suspected of containing radioactive cesium in high concentration. The prefectures are: Iwate, Akita, Niigata, Gunma, Shizuoka, and Gifu.

これで山形、宮城、福島、新潟各県で判明している約８５０頭を含め、汚染された疑いのある稲わらを食べた牛の出荷数は９県で約１４８５頭になった。各県などは牛の流通経路を調べ、残っている肉については放射性物質の検査をする。

850 meat cows in Yamagata, Miyagi, Fukushima, and Niigata have already been found to have eaten the contaminated rice hay. The total number of meat cows in 9 prefectures that were fed with the contaminated rice hay is now 1,485. The prefectures will track the shipment of the cows, and will conduct the test on the unsold meat.

　秋田、群馬、静岡県で与えられていた稲わらは宮城県産で、岩手県では同県産だった。稲わらから高濃度のセシウムが検出されたのは、福島、宮城に次いで３県目。岩手県では、一関市の３戸と隣接する藤沢町の２戸が計１９頭を東京都に出荷。稲わらからは１キロ・グラムあたり最高値で５万７０００ベクレルのセシウムを検出した。水分を含んだ状態に換算すると国の規制値（３００ベクレル）の４３倍に相当する。

The rice hay used in Akita, Gunma, and Shizuoka was harvested in Miyagi Prefecture. In Iwate, it was harvested within the prefecture, making Iwate the third prefecture to have been found with the rice hay with high radioactive cesium. 3 cattle farmers in Ichinoseki City and 2 cattle farmers in adjacent Fujisawa-machi in Iwate Prefecture shipped 19 meat cows to Tokyo. The rice hay in Iwate was found to contain the maximum of 57,000 becquerels/kg. If the hay is reconstituted with water, the amount of radioactive cesium is 43 times as much as the national safety limit (300 becquerels/kg).

Again, the cows didn't eat "reconstituted" rice hay. They ate the dry rice hay.

If Iwate's hay came from Ichinoseki City and its surrounding area, again it matches the radiation contour map made by Yukio Hayakawa, volcanologist at Gunma University. (For his chart, see my post on July 17).

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