For those who were wondering why Japan has still not ended their ban on US beef, today’s NYT makes it quite clear.
The F.D.A. proposed banning from animal feed the brains and spinal cords of cows more than 30 months old. It also proposed banning the same parts of any animal not passed by inspectors as suitable for human food, any tallow that contained more than 0.15 percent protein and any meat contained in brain or spinal column that was separated from carcasses by machine.
The new proposal would still allow animals to be fed material that some scientists consider potentially infectious, including the brains and spinal cords of young animals; the eyes, tonsils, intestines and nerves of old animals; chicken food and chicken dung swept up from the floors of poultry farms; scrapings from restaurant plates; and calf milk made from cow blood and fat.
[…]
Michael K. Hansen, an expert on prion diseases at the Consumers Union, called the proposed regulations “completely inadequate,” noting that Britain “took many halfway steps in their efforts to eliminate mad cow disease and failed to stop it.” Only when it stopped feeding mammals to food animals did they cut the cases down to less than 10 a year, he said.
Have you read My Year of Meat by Ruth Ozeki? Pretty interesting book with related content.
Yes, that is a good book. Ozeki writes really well about meat production, including how the use of growth hormones (steroids) given to cows may lead to early puberty in kids. Scary.
Hey I’m all for early puberty.. if that KSW guy had early puberty maybe he’d be able to grow a full beard!
Anyway, looks like they’re lifting the ban in December for real this time, for better or worse.
This issue reminds me of a larger scale version of an individual McDonald’s… you really don’t want to know what’s in the food you’re being served, do you? Once you learn that the food you’ve been eating might be tainted, it’s hard to look at it the same again. That explains a lot of the trouble that McDonald’s Japan continues to have after the first mad cow scare in Japan.
My cousin once told me that when she used to work at McDonald’s she would sweep the floor and then pour the dust in the milkshake machine. Gross! Does that mean I’ll never drink another McDonald’s milkshake? No, I just had one last week and it was delicious.
I say that not to imply that Japan should look the other way, as the American industry seems to be saying (“do the right thing” — Yeah right, I wouldn’t drink poison if it meant my roommate wouldn’t have to pay the phone bill this month, would you?).
But seriously, all this navel-gazing worry over the cleanliness of food in Japan can’t be good for the people as a whole. Blissful ignorance about the cleanliness of food is one of the pillars of human society. Now that Japan has actually done the “right thing” by completing its study (as opposed to what the Americans want), maybe the Japanese people will be able to begin the healing process so that they can start eating dirty food again.
Turns out they’re set to lift the ban in December…