Where’s the beef?

Updated to correct statistics about “mad cows” in the U.S.

David and I were interviewed Wednesday night for this week’s Seoul Podcast and, as I told Joe and Jennifer, I usually avoid writing about political or controversial current events in Korea because, when you write like you know what you’re talking about—and you don’t—you end up looking like an idiot.

I should have kept that in mind when I wrote this earlier post about the FTA beef protests and inadvertently aligned myself with the lunatic fringe.

Source: AP photo published in the Chosun Ilbo.

Over the past month, thousands of people–including many middle school, high school, and university students— have participated in huge protests against the beef-import agreements in the proposed KORUS free-trade agreement.

18-year old Kim Chae-won stated her opposition. “Even if you don’t eat beef you can get mad cow disease so why in the hell are they importing it?
…

All kinds of stories are growing and spreading. If you eat beef infected with mad cow disease you die instantly, mad cow disease can be spread by air and water, you can get it from a kiss — every sort of false rumor exists.

To clarify: I am no fan of the U.S. beef industry. I think that large-scale cattle farming, feedlots and industrial slaughterhouses engage in inhumane and unsanitary practices. Most beef cattle are fed an inappropriate diet and then pumped full of antibiotics to encourage rapid growth and treat illnesses caused by substandard living conditions and feeding practices.

However, there has only been one case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad cow disease) ever found in the United States and that was in a cow that was originally born in Canada have only been three cases of BSE found in the United States. That cow also never made it to the slaughterhouse. None of these cattle were slaughtered and processed for beef. There are strict regulations to prevent diseased cattle from getting into the food supply.

Human cases of “mad cow disease” (the human form is known as variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease) take months, sometimes years, to develop and are believed to be caused by exposure to an infectious agent in the brains, spinal columns and nerve tissue from infected animals. You cannot get mad cow disease by breathing the same air as an infected person.

(The regulations that I belive most need to be strengthened and more stringently enforced govern the handling of meat during processing, but don’t get me started on that …)

Notably, Korea does not have a process in place to detect the presence of BSE in its own cattle, so Koreans could be more at risk from eating homegrown beef.

Really, though, I should just save my breath (and my typing fingers) because the protests really aren’t about food safety. They reflect dissatisfaction with the current president, Lee Myung Bak, adding in a good dose of anti-Americanism for good measure.

I wandered in to a discussion about this with Mrs. H. (She asked what I thought Barack Obama’s chances were against McCain and this led to a discussion of the influence of the media, which led to a discussion about the President Lee’s current approval ratings.)

According to Mrs. H, “most Koreans” know that U.S. beef is safe, but they are unhappy about the way that Lee Myung Bak has negotiated with the U.S., saying that they believe he has not “stood up for the Korean people” enough. She did go on to say that she personally believed that Korea had no choice but to negotiate trade agreements that would, inevitably, harm some Korean interests (small farmers, for example) because the country needed to participate in the global economy or get left behind. I didn’t get the feeling that this last part was a popular opinion.

Heeding the principle expressed in my first paragraph, though, I am going to refrain from speculating on the “Korean take” on the beef issue, except to say that, like Americans, Koreans are not of just one mind on anything. As compelling as thousands of students marching through the streets and fighting with riot police are, it does not mean that they represent the beliefs of the entire country. Even they don’t all agree about why they are protesting.

Given the large number of student protestors, and the ‘facts’ that many cite as influencing their opinion (that you can get “mad cow disease” through the air, that you can die within minutes or hours of consuming U.S. beef), it does make you question the role of the media, the Internet and education system here.

But that’s a post for another day.