Japan halts shipments of radioactive beef

The Japanese government is coming under fire for only halting shipments of contaminated cattle now, four months after the 11 March earthquake and tsunami that led to the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima Daiichi atomic energy station.

Authorities recently discovered that 637 cattle had been fed hay contaminated with radioactive cesium and then shipped from farms in northern prefectures including Fukushima.On Saturday Aeon Co., Japan’s biggest supermarket chain, admitted that it had sold beef from cattle tainted by radiation to customers at fourteen of its stores in Tokyo and four other prefectures.

Lawmakers and consumers are blasting the government for its poor handling of food safety.

Before Japan’s Parliament, Tsutomu Takebe, a former agriculture minister from the oppositionLiberal Democratic Party, said, “This government completely lacks risk-management ability.”

“It’s already four months, and what you have done?” he asked.

According to Japan’s health ministry, as much as 2,300becquerels of cesium a kilogram was found in the contaminated beef, far in excess of the government limit of 500 becquerels per kilogram. In addition rice hay from the Fukushima prefecture was found to contain as much as 690,000 becquerels, exceeding the 300-becquerel limit.

Products like spinach, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, tea, milk, plums, and fish as far as 220 miles away from the Fukushima power plant have also been found to be contaminated with radioactive cesium and iodine.

“The contamination occurred because the government did not take appropriate measures,” said Yoko Tomiyama, chairwoman of the Consumers Union of Japan. “They should take responsibility for their negligence.”

Peter Burns, a nuclear physicist and a Australia’s former representative to the United Nation’s scientific committee on atomic radiation, was surprised by the Japanese government’s slow response.

“I would have thought that within two or three months they would have formed some sort of task force who has somebody in overall control and who knows what the overall situation is,” Burns said. “Otherwise you end up with these sorts of things leaking through.”

Burns went on to say that if these sorts of issues are not addressed, they can badly damage consumer confidence both for Japan’s internal market as well as its exports.

“Like with Chernobyl, you don’t have people buying anything from Ukraine because it might be contaminated,” he said.

Takebe recommended that the government begin testing all cattle for contamination to help reassure worried consumers.

The Fukushima prefecture is the tenth largest cattle-producing region in Japan, contributing 2.7 percent of the country’s total. Last year Japan exported 541,045 metric tons of beef worth $42.8 million.