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Captain Corea
Joined: 28 Feb 2005
Location: Seoul
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 Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2008 1:25 pm Post subject: Something good comes from all the MCD protests |
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Korea has ramped up its own testing.
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2893786
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In a fortified lab in Suwon, Gyeonggi, Shim Hang-sub, a veterinarian, examines a cow�s brain he took from a slaughterhouse in the same province. He slices the organ and puts it in reagents to watch the biochemical reactions. It takes four to five hours for them to fully appear. The test shows whether or not the cow was infected with bovine spongiform encephalopathy, commonly known as mad cow disease.
Shim, an employee of Gyeonggi�s Livestock and Veterinary Service, is in charge of testing for the disease. The brains he collects come from so-called downer cattle, which means the animals are too sick to stand or walk. In May, the government began requiring that all downer cows be examined, in an effort to toughen safety standards for cattle raised on Korean soil. The country�s veterinary services now test all downer cows for mad cow disease. The candlelight vigils of the last few months became a wake-up call for the government to pay more attention to the safety of beef not only from the United States but also from domestic cattle.
Demonstrators blocked streets in central Seoul, some wielding metal pipes, to protest reopening of the local beef market, but they seldom questioned the safety of Korean beef. But is it really safe?
Not many know that Korea has not yet obtained a controlled-risk status for BSE, though the government said there has been no outbreak of mad cow disease here. This is a curious oversight, considering that even the U.S. acquired the status last year. American beef was banned in Korea following an outbreak of mad cow disease in the U.S. in 2003. To obtain the status, which is granted by the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE), the country accumulates points by running tests similar to what Shim does every day.
According to the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, the National Veterinary Research and Quarantine Service tested a total of 18,855 cows between 1996 and 2006 and 8,368 cows in 2007. Korea earned 108,847 points in the process - 0.01 point is earned for inspecting a healthy cow and up to 750 points are added for examining a sick cow. The OIE requirement to earn the status is 240,000 points, meaning Korea is far from having enough. The government said it wants to achieve controlled-risk status by 2010.
�The World Organization for Animal Health changed its point system in May 2005 so that higher points can be earned from examining sick cows,� said Oh Soon-min, director of the agriculture ministry�s animal quarantine team. Oh explained that Korea had tested mostly healthy cows through sampling and this is why it has not yet earned enough points. The government, however, started focusing on sick cows in 2007 to accumulate points faster. Another reason for the change is growing public concern over downer cows.
After the airing of MBC�s �PD Diary� investigative program on mad cow disease in April, many people came to believe that there is a strong connection between mad cow disease and downer cows, though this is not necessarily true.
�There are four prevalent causes for cows to be unable to stand or walk - injury, hard labor [in calving], paralysis after labor and bloat. There are many other diseases that leave cows unable to walk and they are unrelated to mad cow disease,� said Seo Sang-kyo, head of the Gyeonggi Provincial Office�s livestock division. �Cows that show signs of those diseases were excluded from the brain inspection.�
Thus, in the past, only downer cows that showed symptoms of mad cow disease like extreme sensitivity to light, sound and touch were inspected. According to the Agriculture Ministry, there were 3,642 downer cows in the country in 2007.
All downer cows are now supposed to be tested, but some have gone undetected and been butchered without proper inspection.
In July, Cheonan police arrested three people and indicted 19 others without detention for illegally butchering 174 sick cows and selling the beef for 2.7 billion ($2.6 million) in 2006. Local shops bought the beef knowing it was from sick cows.
�Diseased or dead cows must be inspected by veterinarians before they are butchered,� said Lee Yeol, a senior policeman at the Cheonan Police Station. The Gangwon Provincial Police Agency also arrested three people for butchering and selling a dead cow.
Critics say mad cow disease is undetected in Korea because there are not enough tests. �More than 600,000 cows are slaughtered each year but only an average of 2,300 cows are examined annually. The sample is just too small,� said Woo Hee-jong, a veterinary professor at Seoul National University.
�Judgment over whether Korea is free from mad cow disease needs to be reserved until there is valid evidence from sufficient tests,� he said.
The Association of Veterinarians for Public Health also recently called on the government to test all downer cattle for mad cow disease.
However, Woo acknowledged there is a much smaller possibility for mad cow disease occurring in Korea than elsewhere in the world due to Koreans� dietary habits. Koreans eat cattle�s internal organs and boil cow bones to make soup. So after human consumption, there is little cow meat or bone left for feed. Mad cow disease is known to be caused by recycling diseased animal protein in cattle feed.
But there is still risk of exposure from overseas. There is a chance imported beef could cause infection in humans, and imported animal protein feed could infect cattle here. In 1996 Korea banned feeds with animal protein produced from cattle. It also prohibited feeding ruminant [cud-chewing] animals with animal protein feed produced from other ruminants in 2001. Beginning in September, all animal protein feed will be banned for cattle, except for feed made from fish.
This does not mean that domestic cattle are completely safe from eating animal protein feed produced from cow meat and bones.
The government denied that it imported animal protein feed until Korea was named as one of the importers of animal protein feed exported from once-BSE plagued Britain.
The Independent newspaper reported on Dec. 11, 2000 that even after Britain banned the use of meat and bone meal from slaughtered cows in cattle feed in 1988, the product was still exported, including to Korea.
Farmer Lee Hyung-bok, who has been in the cattle business for over 30 years, said he has never heard of animal protein being used in cattle feed.
�Ordinary farmers would not know because feed is blended before it is sold. Only the Agriculture Ministry would know.� Lee said. |
Good news. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2008 2:37 pm Post subject: |
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Yes, that is good news.
Last week, PD Diary was forced to apologize to the country. It wasn't very sincere, but it's a start. I think a lot of the public learned to be a bit more skeptical of what they see on TV. |
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CentralCali
Joined: 17 May 2007
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| Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2008 3:00 pm Post subject: |
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[quote="Ya-ta Boy"]Last week, PD Diary was forced to apologize to the country. It wasn't very sincere, but it's a start.[/url]
Very cool. Do you happen to know what their wording was?
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| I think a lot of the public learned to be a bit more skeptical of what they see on TV. |
Sure hope that lasts! |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2008 3:25 pm Post subject: |
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I looked, but the article describing the apology has been taken down. There is this, though:
It is going to take more than a simple minute-and-a-half apology and the dismissal of two production staff to absolve MBC from the guilt of spreading mad cow hysteria and damaging the image of Korea. What must take place is a thorough investigation of how the facts ended up being distorted and exaggerated. We should not trust MBC to conduct this investigation, since it has refused to do it so far. Just as the KCSC asked the Korean Society for Journalism and Communication Studies to deliberate on the objectivity of the broadcasts focusing on the motion to impeach former president Roh Moo-hyun, so a panel of outside experts should deliberate on the mad cow broadcasts.
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200808/200808140022.html |
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rebel_1812
Joined: 17 May 2008
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2008 3:39 pm Post subject: |
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[quote="CentralCali"]
| Ya-ta Boy wrote: |
Last week, PD Diary was forced to apologize to the country. It wasn't very sincere, but it's a start.[/url]
Very cool. Do you happen to know what their wording was?
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| I think a lot of the public learned to be a bit more skeptical of what they see on TV. |
Sure hope that lasts! |
I doubt it. Things are not going to change. The media will still put out lies that demonize everything not korean and the korean people will still believe it. Why? Because the korean people want to believe that everything not korean is bad. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2008 3:57 pm Post subject: |
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| I doubt it. Things are not going to change. |
You remind me of Dylan's song "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues"
When you're lost in the rain in Juarez
And its Eastertime too
And your gravity fails
And negativity don't pull you through...
What do you do when your negativity fails?
Under your avatar it says you joined here in May of this year. Just how much experience in Korea have you had that justifies your claim to understand Korea and Koreans? |
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CentralCali
Joined: 17 May 2007
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| Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2008 4:16 pm Post subject: |
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| Well, he might not have much experience here, calendrically (so to speak), but he might have a point. After all, look at how many people in Korea believe that US military are immunie from prosecution in a Korean court although there are US servicemembers serving time in Korean jails! |
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Frankly Mr Shankly
Joined: 13 Feb 2008
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| Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2008 5:49 pm Post subject: |
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| Something good coming from the Anti-(U.S) beef protests? I thought you were going to report on the collapse of the Han-Mi FTA and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from this godforsaken rock, as well as the incarceration of Hanchonryon and their fascist paramilitary goons. |
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Captain Corea
Joined: 28 Feb 2005
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2008 6:01 pm Post subject: |
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| Frankly Mr Shankly wrote: |
| Something good coming from the Anti-(U.S) beef protests? I thought you were going to report on the collapse of the Han-Mi FTA and the withdrawal of U.S. troops from this godforsaken rock, as well as the incarceration of Hanchonryon and their fascist paramilitary goons. |
I said 'good', not 'fantastic'. |
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Young FRANKenstein
Joined: 02 Oct 2006
Location: Castle Frankenstein (that's FRONKensteen)
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| Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2008 7:20 pm Post subject: Re: Something good comes from all the MCD protests |
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Unless this article was also published in the Korean dailies, it's going out to the wrong masses. |
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Ya-ta Boy
Joined: 16 Jan 2003
Location: Established in 1994
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| Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 12:55 am Post subject: |
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| Well, he might not have much experience here, calendrically (so to speak), but he might have a point. |
It strikes me that the only point is on his head. This thread started with a report that beef inspections have improved. That's a good change. To follow that with 'nothing is going to change' is to entirely miss the point of the first post. Just cheap cynicism. |
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CentralCali
Joined: 17 May 2007
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| Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 12:58 am Post subject: |
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Oh, I can see that things are going to change for Korean inspection of their own foodstuffs; however, what will take a major change in attitude is the way the society, as a whole, views foreigners. Especially important is how their media reports issues regarding foreigners.
Of note for the beef issue is how Korean society demonized the US while touting their own, as it turns out, not well-inspected beef. |
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Gollywog
Joined: 14 Jun 2008
Location: Debussy's brain
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| Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 3:40 am Post subject: |
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Interesting. You sure have to dig to find a simple statement of fact that American beef is safe, but here it is, in the LAST paragraph of the editorial:
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| MBC should now thoroughly inform the public of the truth about mad cow disease, which it had been neglecting to do. Until now, not a single person has been confirmed to have contracted variant Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (vCJD) in the United States after consuming American beef. People in around 100 countries around the world, including Americans and Europeans, consume American beef on a regular basis. But there were no hysteria or fears in any of those countries. MBC must exert the same amount of effort it has done in spreading mad cow fears on disseminating the truth. The process of truly apologizing and compensating for its false reports begins now. |
Note the slanted use of "until now" and "confirmed." (Ah, but the night is young.) How about just saying "no one has been found with vCJD."
http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200808/200808140022.html
And then there is this statement from reporter Limb Jae-un:
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| But there is still risk of exposure from overseas. There is a chance imported beef could cause infection in humans, and imported animal protein feed could infect cattle here. |
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2893786
No source. Korean reporters don't have to cite reputable sources for potentially libelous statements. Noooo. They're Korean, and everyone knows Korea has the best journalists in the world.
Even the seemingly friendly newspapers can't resist getting in a back-handed anti-American dig.
Sorry, OP, I don't think anything has been learned from Korea's Mad Cow Insanity, at least not until Korean journalists are required to state facts objectively, and not just make stuff up out of thin air.
Here's a fact, which has not appeared, as far as I can tell, in any Korean newspaper:
How many cows in the United States have been found with BSE (mad cow disease)? Three, including one imported from Canada. THAT'S what all this mad cow madness has been about.
See the graph:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/bse/
But how many cows infected with BSE did Korea have?
None. Because they didn't test until recently, and their testing still does not meet minimum international standards.
And how many Koreans have gotten vCJD?
Probably several.
Why?
Because they eat the cow brains and spinal cords, precisely what is most likely to put them at risk of contracting vCJD:
| Quote: |
However, Woo acknowledged there is a much smaller possibility for mad cow disease occurring in Korea than elsewhere in the world due to Koreans� dietary habits. Koreans eat cattle�s internal organs and boil cow bones to make soup. So after human consumption, there is little cow meat or bone left for feed. Mad cow disease is known to be caused by recycling diseased animal protein in cattle feed. |
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2893786
I love that Korean logic. The risk of cows in Korea getting mad cow disease is low because humans eat all the parts that can cause mad cow disease, themselves. Kinda misses the point, doesn't it?
(We eat the infected parts of cows, ourselves, so our cows won't get sick! --- Now, why didn't Britain think of that? Why, they wouldn't have had to destroy millions and millions of potentially infected cattle, including 184,000 confirmed infected with BSE. Just stop testing and eat the cows, from hoof to head, like the Koreans do. If you don't test for BSE, then you can't get BSE. You can ONLY get BSE if the cattle test positive for BSE, and if you don't test.... And if you eat the cattle yourself, then the cattle won't get infected.... Of course, that doesn't work because that's not how the cows were actually infected.)
Why is it probable the Korean cows were infected?
Because 26 cows in Japan were found to be infected with BSE. So it stands to reason that Korea used the same feed, livestock, and general farming practices. And it probably had dozens of cows infected with BSE, or more.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopathy *
For Dave's Korean readers:
http://ko.wikipedia.org/wiki/소해면상뇌증
And what d'ya know:
| Quote: |
The government denied that it imported animal protein feed until Korea was named as one of the importers of animal protein feed exported from once-BSE plagued Britain.
The Independent newspaper reported on Dec. 11, 2000 that even after Britain banned the use of meat and bone meal from slaughtered cows in cattle feed in 1988, the product was still exported, including to Korea. |
"The government denied that it imported animal protein feed until ..." Nothing un-Korean about that. If there's something bad about Korea, just lie about it to the Korean people. (Corollary: If there's something good about the United States, just lie about it to the Korean people.)
It is fairly well-established that there is a link between BSE in Britain and the feed that was used. And Korea was using the same feed, which presumably also made its way to Japan.
What, exactly, was wrong with the feed?
Listen up Korean beef eaters! You're going to love this!
Korean cattle were fed human remains, including human skulls.
And YOU may have eaten the brain from a cow that ate the human skulls. (And the milk you drank, or perhaps are still drinking, may be from a cow that ate those human remains.)
And where did the skulls come from? Funerals in India.
While not everyone agrees that these human remains, some presumably diseased, caused the BSE outbreak that infected nearly 200,000 cattle IN EUROPE, it is a FACT that human remains, including skulls were seen being used in the manufacture of the cattle feed.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4201072.stm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2005/sep/02/sciencenews.controversiesinscience
In Hindu funerals, the dead body is put into the Ganges to float down river. Some poor people retrieved these bodies and sold them to bone collector businesses that supplied the cattle feed manufacturers.
And guess what?
America didn't use this stuff. That's why there was no BSE outbreak in the U.S.
But Korea is a lot closer to India than the U.S., and the news article states that Korea imported the same feed from Britain that was causing the BSE outbreak -- EVEN AFTER IT WAS BANNED IN BRITAIN. (Oh, Uncle Kim watches out for you, Korea!)
So, clearly, Korean beef is NOT safe, at least from BSE. In fact, there could still be BSE infected cows in Korea, especially dairy cows.
And are Korean slaughter practices safe? Judge for yourself:
| Quote: |
| In July, Cheonan police arrested three people and indicted 19 others without detention for illegally butchering 174 sick cows and selling the beef for 2.7 billion ($2.6 million) in 2006. Local shops bought the beef knowing it was from sick cows. |
(That's $15,000 per diseased cow!)
http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2893786
What Korea needs to learn from the mad cow hysteria is the importance of objective, fact-based, fair and unbiased journalism. Instead, they seem to equate pro-Korean with "objective."
When all of my students and fellow teachers know the facts, that American beef is safe and that Americans aren't out to poison Koreans, then I will feel that some progress has been made. But I don't think they read newspapers.
* The wikipedia article on BSE lists three people in the U.S. as having contracted vCJD. But upon investigation, all were found to have lived outside the U.S. during the period they would have contracted the disease:
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/vcjd/qa.htm
Last edited by Gollywog on Mon Aug 18, 2008 5:10 am; edited 3 times in total |
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Captain Corea
Joined: 28 Feb 2005
Location: Seoul
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| Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 5:04 am Post subject: |
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| Gollywog wrote: |
Listen up Korean beef eaters! You're going to love this!
Korean cattle were fed human remains, including human skulls.
And YOU may have eaten the brain from a cow that ate the human skulls. (And the milk you drank, or perhaps are still drinking, may be from a cow that ate those human remains.) |
Got dates for all of this? Got any hard facts (other than Korea is closer to India than the US)? |
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Gollywog
Joined: 14 Jun 2008
Location: Debussy's brain
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| Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2008 5:13 am Post subject: |
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Yes.
Did you bother to read any of the articles cited in this thread?
Where the heck do you think I got these statements from?
I'm not a Korean journalist, politician or historian; I don't just make things up out of thin air.
Here's another article:
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Did human remains start BSE?
Mad cow disease may have originated from human remains mixed into cattle feed, according to a controversial new theory.
A leading British expert on BSE believes there is strong evidence for linking the brain disease - which gave rise to variant CJD in humans - to a grisly trade in carcass material that was prevalent in the 1960s and '70s.
Over those decades Britain imported hundreds of thousands of tons of ground-up animal parts for use as fertiliser and the manufacture of feed. Nearly half this meat-and-bone meal came from the Indian sub-continent.
Professor Alan Colchester, from the University of Kent in Canterbury, argues that some of it almost certainly contained human as well as animal remains.
The human material could be traced to corpses disposed of in rivers in accordance with Hindu funeral custom.
Collecting and selling bones and carcasses is a common local trade among peasants, who may not be too selective about what kind of remains they pick up, says Prof Colchester.
"The inclusion of human remains in material delivered to processing mills has been clearly described," he wrote in The Lancet medical journal in a paper co-authored by his daughter, Nancy Colchester, from the University of Edinburgh.
The theory suggests that "ordinary", or sporadic, Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease which arises naturally in humans was initially passed to cattle via feed contaminated with infected human tissue.
It emerged in the cow population as Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, or BSE. Later, the infective agent was transmitted back to humans consuming meat products such as beef-burgers. In 1995 it re-emerged in a new form as "variant" or vCJD, a deadly and incurable brain disease. |
More:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-361076/Did-human-remains-start-BSE.html
And if you read the article quoted by the OP, (or my post) you would have seen this:
| Quote: |
The government denied that it imported animal protein feed until Korea was named as one of the importers of animal protein feed exported from once-BSE plagued Britain.
The Independent newspaper reported on Dec. 11, 2000 that even after Britain banned the use of meat and bone meal from slaughtered cows in cattle feed in 1988, the product was still exported, including to Korea.
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http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2893786
Here is the full scientific paper:
http://www.ecofriends.org/reports/madcow.pdf
Last edited by Gollywog on Mon Aug 18, 2008 5:35 am; edited 2 times in total |
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