#Radioactive Rice Hay in Tochigi: 106,000 Becquerels/Kg Cesium

The Tochigi prefectural government announced the number on July 25. 106,000 becquerels/kg of cesium in the hay is the highest level so far found outside Fukushima Prefecture. If reconstituted, it would be 24,246 becquerels/kg. The safety limit for the cattle feed is 300 becquerels/kg.

The rice hay was collected in a dairy farm in Nasu Shiobara (more than 100 kilometers southwest of Fukushima I Nuke Plant) and sold to the cattle farm in the same City. Something doesn't quite add up to the story of the both sides, though. According to Asahi Shinbun (7/24/2011):

The seller (dairy farmer):

He received the rice hay from a nearby rice farmer in exchange for the manure. He rolled the rice hay into 38 rolls and left them outside. The rice farmer had kept the rice hay in the rice fields after the harvest last fall.

He then sold the rolled rice hay to the cattle farmer via his acquaintance, by saying "it cannot be used as feed". "I never imagined the hay would be fed to the cows."

The buyer (cattle farmer):

"I was never told that the hay was rolled on March 20. If I had known, I wouldn't have bought it."

The middleman:

He got 16 rolls of rice hay from the dairy farmer on April 4 to sell them to the cattle farmer. The dairy farmer told him that the hay was probably radioactive, but the middleman, the dairy farmer's acquaintance, answered that the cattle farmer would use it for composting.

As it's reported by Asahi, the middleman looks bad, but all of them may have changed stories once radioactive cesium was found from the meat and the hay.

Even if they all changed stories, that's nothing compared to the story-changing by the Japanese government since the nuclear disaster started. The national government was the one who propagated their "truth" that the further away from Fukushima I Nuke Plant one got, the safer and the less exposure to the radiation. No need to worry at all, said Dr. Shunichi "100 millisieverts are safe" Yamashita, to the residents living outside 30 kilometer radius.

Farmers in Nasu Shiobara in Tochigi Prefecture, located more than 100 kilometers southwest from the nuke plant, probably had little reason to believe their fields were contaminated, unless they happened to be looking up information on the Internet.

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