Friday, July 22, 2011

Thus Spread Radiation All Over Japan - Through Contaminated Cows

I had expected the wide spread (other than the radioactive plume from Fukushima I Nuke Plant) of radioactive materials in Japan to occur via the radioactive debris in the Tohoku region as municipalities far away from Fukushima are asked to receive debris for burning and burying to help clean Tohoku after the earthquake/tsunami (and conveniently missing is a mention of nuke accident).

That can still happen, but it is the radioactive beef from the cows that ate radioactive rice hay that have brought radiation everywhere in Japan.

Now, in the latest tally by NHK, at least 1,698 cows may have eaten the rice hay with high level of radioactive cesium, and they have been shipped and sold in every prefecture in Japan except Okinawa.

An increasing number of Japanese don't believe it's just about the rice hay and the cows, although the government has been trying its best to focus people's attention to them.

(And where there's cesium, there's strontium, as the Nuclear Safety Commission said in early June, when the Ministry of Education announced the discovery of strontium 62 kilometers from Fukushima I Nuke Plant in April and May.)

From NHK News Japanese (4:55AM JST 7/23/2011):

NHKのまとめによりますと、放射性セシウムを含んだ疑いのある稲わらを肉牛に与えていた畜産農家は、▽宮城県で36戸、▽福島県で25戸、▽新潟県で 15戸、▽岩手県で12戸、▽山形県、秋田県、岐阜県でそれぞれ6戸、▽群馬県と埼玉県でそれぞれ2戸、それに▽北海道と茨城県、栃木県、静岡県、三重 県、島根県でそれぞれ1戸で、15の県の合わせて116戸に上っています。また、こうした農家から出荷された肉牛は、少なくとも1697頭に上り、流通先 は沖縄県を除く46都道府県に広がっています。

According to NHK's tally, the number of cattle farms: 36 in Miyagi; 25 in Fukushima; 15 in Niigata; 12 in Iwate; 6 in Yamagata; 6 in Akita; 6 in Gifu; 2 in Gunma; 2 in Saitama; and 1 each in Hokkaido, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Shizuoka, Mie, and Shimane. Total of 116 cattle farms in 15 prefectures shipped at least 1,697 cows to 46 prefectures, expect to Okinawa.

By the way, Okinawa Prefecture does not have a nuclear power plant, and has received hardly any radioactive plume from Fukushima I Nuke Plant as far as I've seen in the radiation dispersion forecasts by European meteorological institutes. Clean air, clean water, good food. (Well, until those nuclear reactors in Taiwan start to break down in a big earthquake there...)

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

moooooo pluto the cow

@ortospace said...

...and because Okinawa executives of power companies did not make any donation to LDP, they have been punished with no NPPs, no plume, and not even a bit of radioactive beef!
http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110723p2g00m0dm022000c.html

Anonymous said...

drinking milk & LMAO part of greater cowspiracy

STEVE THE JEW said...

radioactivity moooooooving all over japan...

Mike said...

I stocked up on a few kilos of Aussie ground beef as soon as I got back from Japan in April in costco, and in restaurants I only eat Saizeriya chicken, which is from Brazil.

Anonymous said...

If one didn't know that this whole disaster was a reflection of gross negligence and mismanagement, one could be led to believe that it was a conspiracy to kill off as many Japanese as possible...
If this was Chinese beef doing the rounds, like the damn Unagi (eel) scare, the nationalistas would be out in force torching the red flag and anti Chinese sentiment would be at the forefront of everyone's minds.
As it is I suppose the nationalists are wondering who the hell to blame.

It doesn't take much imagination to see that this year the rice harvest is going to get hammered. How can it not? Japan may finally realise how expensive Nuclear Power is as they are forced to eat it 3 times a day...or eat Thai rice.
This is turning out to be a total, unmitigated, festering catastrophe with no end in sight-except that it is going to get a lot worse and we are going to sacrifice safety for expediency every step of the way.
All for one...

Anonymous said...

I live in Tokyo and was at the local festival tonight, very enjoyable. Lots of Fukushima fried noodles to enjoy! Ha, maybe.

Anyway, I met the friendly Swedish chap I sometimes see at these festivals who photographs the events for his hobby. He thinks the radiation scare is exaggerated since people in northern Europe have been eating cesium saturated meat for decades with no ill health effect (yeah rite). He also thinks, I may add, that 911 was carried out according to the official version. Very nice guy but just goes to show how naive the general population are.

He may be right in a sense that people are being overly worried, but that is not a valid argument, given that our lives are at stake. If a wind tower fell or a solar panel went kaput it would not be the same thing. He also thinks the governments in Europe were very very sleazy in covering up the Chernobyl disaster so I think he is probably right about that. People have tried to make the reaction there look very responsible whereas in Japan the government is utterly irresponsible.

I don't know about the details of Cherry Noble but being here in Japan the actions of the government could not have been worse, period.

netudiant said...

It is certainly true that the first rule of bad news management is to get ahead of the bad news, so that subsequent events will not make things look worse and worse. This seems to have been entirely ignored by the Japanese authorities as well as by TEPCO, which is why they are losing every scrap of credibility.
The rice straw debacle is a classic. No one is talking about the obvious, that contaminated rice straw implies contaminated rice plants, which implies contaminated rice.
While people can cut beef out of their diet, rice is a staple. Yet given the lack of clear standards or credible inspection, all of Japan's rice will be under this cloud. Japan's people deserve better than this.

Anonymous said...

My impression was that the hay is from last year's harvest and was stored outside or within reach of the fallout. The hay is also sold across the country so where it is fed to the cattle is not always where it came from. This year's rice has not been brought in yet, but there won't be good news that's for sure.

People in Tokyo are well shielded from the bad news and pampered in most respects. They had little impact from the quake. JGOV cannot afford to let the heart of Japan Inc miss a beat. As you have seen recovery is quicker than expected, economically. This was the objective. Don't ask people, especially foreigners, in Tokyo whether they are worried. If they would be, they wouldn't be there to be asked.

Which leads to point #2: would the people who fell ill or died prematurely or both after 1986 in Europe please raise their hands. Nobody? OK, great!

Great areas of Japan have only received the fallout that Western Europe had after Chernobyl, i.e. relatively "mild". However, great areas of Japan has fallout that is far worse than Chernobyl's worst areas.

Anonymous said...

I repost this information about Sweden. The most extreme levels of radiation was found in fresh water fish shortly after the Chernobyl accident.

Here is a report written by the Food ministry in Sweden about 10 years after the accident. Here is an translation to english

http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=auto&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.slv.se%2Fsv%2Fgrupp1%2FRisker-med-mat%2FRadioaktivitet-och-bestralning%2FRadioaktiva-amnen%2FTio-ar-efter-Tjernobyl%2F&act=url

The google translation is fairly good even if it goes wrong sometimes.

NFA = Food ministry
överskottshö = left over hay
fårkroppar = bodies of sheep
"clean" should sometimes be translated to "raindeer"
"It is particularly clean, freshwater fish, game and mushrooms" =
"It is particularly reindeer, freshwater fish, wild animals and mushrooms"
årsintaget= yearly intake

Anonymous said...

Lord Stern ( UB Climate ):

Only dropping meat can save the human species.

And that was long before latest Nasa measurements on Greenland
and teh antartic, showing a speeding up exponentially
Up of defrost by a factor 6

We had 50 years before 'No Return'°°

now it is 9

It makes Fukushima : peanuts

After °° it will take 80;000 years to go back
to present temps

This was fro National Geographic
"Earth under water" on TV

Qee my song JESUS
at youtube.com/ankhaton



Now it is

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