The meat from the cows that ate highly radioactive rice hay in Fukushima has been shipped, sold, and consumed in many cases in 26 prefectures in Japan. There are 47 prefectures in Japan.
When the news first broke, the meat was supposed to have been sold in only several prefectures; then 8 then 10, now 26 and counting.
People, from Mayor of Yokohama City on down, say "We thought it was safe because it was being sold in the market."
According to NHK's Kabun (Science and Culture) Blog's tweet, the prefectures are:
Tokyo, Chiba, Kanagawa, Saitama, Gunma, Tochigi, Ibaraki, Niigata, Nagano, Miyagi, Yamagata, Iwate, Akita, Fukushima, Aichi, Ishikawa, Fukui, Yamanashi, Shizuoka, Osaka, Kyoto, Mie, Hyogo, Ehime, Kagawa, Fukuoka.
The only prefectures in the eastern half of Japan that haven't been found with the contaminated beef are: Toyama, Aomori, Hokkaido
The Japanese people who are against nuclear power plants had better start demonstrating against radioactive food and radioactive garbage, among other things, that have been forced on them through the government action (like raising the safety limit for radioactive garbage ashes) and non-action (like not testing rice hay for radiation). They may get their wish of nuke-free Japan, but unless they start to fight the small details right now, the nuke-free Japan may become inhabitable.
30-Day free trial by following the link.
Tokyo Time
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3 comments:
I don't believe that Japan will become "uninhabitable," but it seems as if they are taking a page out of the official response to Chernobyl. Supposedly, there was a secret directive then to mix contaminated food 10% with uncontaminated food in the rest of the Soviet Union, except Moscow (of course). The effect of such an action is that it will make epidemiological medical studies impossible in the future as there will be no population that has not been exposed with which to make a comparison.
Having said that, the no-threshold hypothesis that ANY amount of radiation, no matter how small, is harmful and will cause disease is quite questionable. The best comparison is to poisons, as clearly it takes a minimum dose for a poison to be harmful. However, as with poisons the difficulty is that people are different and the tolerance varies greatly between individuals.
Rice hay as cattle feed info from UC Davis:
http://animalscience.ucdavis.edu/faculty/robinson/Articles/FullText/pdf/Web200609.pdf
Synopsis: Rice hay is only 5% protein, and therefore it is not suitable for feeding beef cattle for market. It is also not suitable for dairy cows that are being milked. UC Davis only recommends it for feeding young cows (heifers)that are being raised to eventually replace existing dairy milk cows. Also, rice hay is baled during rice harvest season which is August to November-NOT March, which is when TPTB are saying the contaminated hay was baled.
Unless Japanese agricultural practices are vastly different than ours are in the States, I am still not buying the story that the hay is the main source of radiation contamination in beef cattle. If any reader is knowledgeable about Japanese cattle farming and would share his/her opinion, it would be appreciated.
I believe some reports stated that the farmer had run out of normal feed after the earthquake and had to resort to feeding the hay. In the first weeks, delivery drivers refused to drive closer to the plant due to radiation fears depriving people of supplies.
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