CRITICAL COMMENTARY ON THE NEED TO TEST ALL ANIMALS

 
Accordingly, I wrote to several critics of  the US government's pressuring other countries to buy US beef and got the following responses.

Michael Greger, M.D., Director, Public Health and Animal Agriculture of the Humane Society and also associate with  http://www.birdflubook.org has this to say about required testing (which even some companies want to, according to some reports, but which the US has been blocking.):

"One need look no further than Japan. Before Japan started blanket testing in 2001, it found no cases. Now there’s been more than 30. Simply put, the only way to ensure no mad cows enter the food supply is if you test them all. The test is cheap, about US$25, which comes out to just pennies per pound of meat. Instead the USDA has taken companies here in the U.S. to court to force them to STOP testing. "
 

OIE DECLARATION OF LOW RISK: COOPTATION?

     Renée Vellvé (grain.org) says:

 
"Our impression is that there is not much critical analysis about OIE out there. We looked a bit into what they did to  accommodate Washington to get more markets opened to US beef, especially around the US-Korea FTA, but not much more. It's a bit like CODEX Alimentarius — one of these structures that sets global guidelines and recommendations on food safety and health, catering to the strongest corporate and political interests, which most people know little about. The Korean groups have certainly done plenty of work on OIE, and organised mobilisations in front of their office in Paris, but unless you speak Korean or are able to spend time with them, it's not that easy to access what they've learned. If you do read Korean, you can check out the websites of the Korean Peasant League (http://www.ijunnong.net/) and especially the vet group whose name I forgot (http://www.vetnews.or.kr/), Public Veterinary Health for Solidarity or so.

 An upcoming article will be available on the Grain website in the next few weeks that will have some reference to the actions of the the mysterious OIE. At that point the article will be free for republishing here and on other sites.
PUBLLISHED Jul 3 2008
The article mentioned below by GRAIN.ORG has been published.
We have also been invited by the authors to try and provide a Japanese translation.  To summarize, briefly, some its contents, the article notes that bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs) have become a tool of choice to push through averse challenges to food safety regulations and that South Korea has been particularly hit hard.

 Regarding BSE (Mad Cow), the article notes that the US tests only 1 per cent of its cows per year and  other countries are highly skeptical of the efficacy of the US scheme. It says that the Bush administration  got the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE), the international  body for animal health recognised by the World Trade Organisation to declare US beef trustworthy.

The article states that the US strategy at the OIE has been change the guidelines covering trade from countries with Mad Cow. Previously its status was based on the presence of BSE. Now it is based on a so-called “scientific risk assessment” of the safeguards that a country uses to keep BSE out of exports. The result of this process has been a gradual lowering of tee standards. The OIE, "which previously ruled only on a country’s claim to be BSE-free, could now rule on whether or not a country should be considered a 'controlled risk'. If a country gains this classification, it can then more easily restart exports."  The reaction of the US to the OIE issuing its first list of controlled risk countries:  “We will use this international validation to urge our trading partners to reopen export markets to the full spectrum of US cattle and beef products”, Mike Johannes, US Secretary of Agriculture, declared. “We will use every means available to us to ensure that countries rapidly take steps to align their requirements with international standards.”

JAPAN'S EARLY EXPERIENCE WITH MAD COW: J GOVERNMENT SPREADING DECEPTION

In 2001, Yuichi Kitada, a then-student of Hitotsubashi University published a report entitled Mad Cow Disease: "The Report Blocked by the Japanese Government and The Problem with the Japanese Mainstream Media".

http://cp.freeshell.net/sp2001/madcow.html

It is instructive because it is yet another illustration of how government-media collusion conspires to keep the truth from reaching people, with potentially devastating consequences. He also draws parallels to the spread of HIV infections due to the use of unheated blood products for hemophiliacs and other patients.  The article is quite relevant 7 years on to what is taking place now across the globe with regard to the so-called low safety risk of imported US beef and can also serve as a warning regarding other current issues such as the import of foods produced with GMO, growth hormones, antibiotics and other potentially dangerous processes

Article appears in full, prior permission received for making this document public)

 
Mad Cow Disease: "The Report Blocked by the Japanese Government and The Problem with the Japanese Mainstream Media"

" Now, has anyone heard of the fact that at the end of last month, the European Commission was prepared to publicize a report concerning the theoretical potential for Mad Cow Disease to spread in Japan? Yes, this is true, and it is also true that the Japanese Government had asked the European Commission to withhold the publication of this report. And in fact, the government was successful in blocking it.

 " So, why did the Japanese Government block the publication of this report about the Mad Cow Disease? What exactly is the Mad Cow Disease? And what did the Japanese Media do when they heard about this incident? Today I am going to talk about these things in my report.

"Now as I’ve just said, the Japanese Government had asked the European Commission to withhold publication of an alarming report on Mad Cow Disease in Japan. Although this report was not officially completed, it is said that the report would have concluded that while there is no evidence of Mad Cow Disease in Japan at this time, there is a risk of an outbreak because Japan has recently imported cattle, meat and bone meal products from various European Union countries, including ones where the Mad Cow Disease is already present, like Britain and the Netherlands. Also in the report, Japan
was rated a rank 3 on a scale of 1 to 5. The higher the rank, the greater the risk of the Mad Cow Disease contracting in the country. But since the highest ranks, rank 4 and 5 are for countries that already have the Mad Cow Disease in the country, Japan’s rank, rank 3 is the highest between countries that do not have the disease yet.

 "All the information that the European Committee used to make this report was provided by the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, and Fisheries, in Japanese the “農林水産省”. But even though the report was based on the facts that the ministry provided, the ministry and the
 government objected to the European Committee’s findings. It is also a fact that, it was the Japanese agriculture ministry that requested for the committee to undertake an assessment in the first place.

"So then why did the Japanese agriculture ministry block the report? Well, according to a spokesman for the agriculture ministry, the ministry made its request because it did not want to alarm the public unduly. He also said that the commission’s assessment process was flawed (Although this was not specified in what way.).

"Ok, now I would like to explain a little bit about the Mad Cow Disease. First, the Mad Cow Disease,”狂牛病” in Japanese, is scientifically called
the Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy, BSE for short. This is a disease that causes a cow’s brain structure to melt into something like a sponge. It is said to be contracted from things like infected bone meal products or meat. This disease first widely spread in England from the late 1980’s to the early 90’s, and by the year 2000, 180 thousand infected cows had been confirmed. But it is not only England’s problem, last year it spread in France, and the disease has been found in countries like Germany and Spain too. But up to now, it has only been officially confirmed in European countries. This is one of the reasons, countries out of Europe, like Japan and the U.S. are underestimating this problem. But what we have to remember is that, Japan had been importing cow bone material from England, until 1996, long after the Mad Cow Disease spread.

"Now, I think there are two big problems to this incident about the Mad Cow Disease. Of course the first problems are the actions that the Japanese
Government took. At first, not only did the Japanese government fully cooperate to the European Committee’s report, but they were the one’s who asked for the committee’s assessment. Asking for a report to be made, and then asking for the same report to be not publicized, just because the results are unfavorable to them, is not something a government of a democratic country should do. If the government thinks the assessment process was flawed, they should present their own opinion with scientific facts, before or after the committee’s reports are publicized. The Japanese agriculture ministry says that, if the danger concerning the worst thinkable situation is reported based on inaccurate assessments, it will alarm the people unduly and a worse situation will occur. Well what could this “worse situation” mean? The ministry is probably assuming that if the European Committee’s report were publicized, the Japanese people would stop buying cow meat. Then who gets the damage? Of course the agriculture industry will be damaged. But the ones who are going to get the most damage is probably the Japanese food restaurant industry. Especially places like “Yoshinoya”,“Gyukaku” or “McDonalds” are going to be heavily damaged. So the Japanese government has to protect these industries. But remember, it’s our lives on the line here.

"The second problem is with the Japanese Mainstream Media. Almost none of the Japanese Mainstream Media is talking about this problem. For example, I looked through the three major Japanese newspapers, the Asahi, the Yomiuri, and the Mainichi, around the date June 18th 2001. This is the day the details of the European Committee’s report about Mad Cow Disease in Japan became clear. Out of the three papers, I could find only one report about this news. It was in the Asahi newspaper on June 19th. But it was so small I probably would have missed it, if I weren’t looking for it. (It is about the size of a credit card.) In it, it says the European Committee’s opinion is that there is a possibility of the Mad Cow Disease spreading in Japan.
But the report ends with the Japanese government completely denying such possibilities, as if to say the European Committee’s report was eccentric.

After that I looked in alternative medias like the Japan Times. (Although Japan Times is a very famous and big paper and sometimes it is thought of as
mainstream media, I’m calling it alterative media since most Japanese people don’t read it, and especially in this mad cow disease issue, the paper is working as alternative media.) Then I found an article from the June 18th’s paper. Not only the size of the report is bigger(It is 15cm×20cm), but also it is much more detailed. For example, as Asahi didn’t say anything about the Japanese government blocking the European Committee’s report, Japan Times talks about the blocking and the reasons why the government might have done so. This incident is also reported in the International Herald Tribune on June 21st. The size of the report is just about the same as the Japan Times one. Now I think you can see just how small the Japanese Mainstream   Media has taken up this problem.
 

"Now, about two weeks from June 18th, the day the details of the European Committee’s report became clear, the Mainichi newspaper printed this article. It says for the first and only time (up to today) in any of the three major Japanese newspapers that, the Japanese government objected to the publication of the report. But although this is an improvement, the report still seems to support the government’s decisions.

"So why is the Japanese Mainstream Media so quiet about this problem? Well, this is only speculation, but I think, one; there is a possibility the government is pressuring the media, and two; it may be that the media doesn’t  want to say anything that might hurt the food restaurant industry or the agriculture industry.

"Of course it may be difficult for the mainstream media to report on this problem since no one knows if the European Committee’s report is right or wrong. But isn’t it the mainstream media’s responsibility to draw attention to this issue and talk about it? Is protecting the agriculture industry or the food restaurant industry so important that we should risk our lives for? I mean who is the media for anyway?

"But it isn’t the first time the mainstream media is doing something like this. And it isn’t just Japan’s problem. The media all over the world does things like this. But I think it is also true that it is hard to always report everything when most of the mainstream media is getting money from sponsors. (Of course, I’m not saying this is right.)
 

"So then what should we do? Well, one thing we can do is always doubt things we see in the media. We must not forget that to some degree, most, if not all, of the media puts meaning in to what they say. They try to make you think the way they think. Now, this is often the case with the mainstream media, but I don’t think it is an exception with the alternative media either. We must remember that all medias don’t always tell the whole story. (In my opinion, the only way we can make this fact widely known is by teaching media literacy in schools. But this is a little far from my topic so I’m not going to discuss it. )
 

"Now, before I get in to my conclusion, I would like for everybody to think about the so called “薬害エイズ問題” for a second. Although the danger of unheated blood products “非加熱製剤” was not proved in Japan, the Health and Welfare ministry at that time, ignored the fact that nobody in the US used unheated blood products, and kept on using it to patients who had hemophilia or “血友病” in Japanese. This ended up with many hemophilia patients becoming HIV positive. Isn’t there a possibility that the same thing could happen again with this Mad Cow Disease? The European Committee is saying that there is a strong possibility of the Mad Cow Disease spreading in Japan, but the agriculture ministry seems to be doing nothing about it. And they are even trying to hide the fact that the report was going to be made. The situations are so similar, it is frightening.

"Humans cannot live without eating. Eating means living in the human society. Therefore, the Japanese government must protect our food, not Yoshinoya’s business. For a safe life and not repeating the same mistake again, the government must do the right thing and quickly. Because unfortunately, it is not a problem that will just simply “melt away”.