American beef is back: Only Yoshinoya is interested?
Well, American beef is finally back in Japan! But, according to CrissCross News, many stores are not very interested in buying American beef:
TOKYO — Major “gyudon” restaurant chain Yoshinoya D&C Co is so far the only food-related company that is clearly set to use U.S. beef following the recent lifting of an import ban, a survey by the Consumers Union of Japan and Food Safety Citizens’ Watch showed Saturday.
For the survey, the two groups sent questionnaires to 24 major companies in food industry such as supermarkets, beef bowl chains and fast food restaurants from mid- to late July and obtained replies from 21 of them. Seven companies said they will not use U.S. beef, while seven out of eight companies that checked “other” in the questionnaires said they do not plan to use U.S. beef “for the time being.” These include supermarket chain Ito-Yokado Co, and restaurant chains Skylark Co and Jonathan’s Co.
I guess a lot of companies have bought into the panic and fear regarding BSE and American beef. I wonder if they are aware of the potentional danger of BSE in Japanese beef! Just a few months ago, an infected cow in Hokkaido was confirmed as the 26th reported case of BSE in Japan. Don’t hear about that much on the news, do you? Regardless, it is a stupid issue to be afraid about. I don’t see thousands of Americans, or dozens, dying of mad cow disease. Maybe we should worry about greater threats to our health, such as air pollution or mercury in the fish we eat?
Anyway, it’ll be great to finally get some gyudon again at Yoshinoya.
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>Japan: about 100% of the beef entering the food chain is safe. 26 cases found, 0 cases consumed.
>USA: about 0,5% of the beef is safe. 3 cases found? 300? 400? cases consumed.
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Every cow in Japan is tested, which is why the risk of BSE from a Japanese cow is unlikely. In the US they test only a ’statistical sample’, which guarantees some having BSE will be exported.
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Even if some BSE beef is being consumed or exported by America, I have yet to see any reports of a significant of BSE-related human deaths. You’d think with the lax testing policies in America there’d be people contracting the disease and dying from it left and right, and the media loves sensational fear-causing stories like that. If people were dying from BSE, we’d be hearing about it. My point isn’t that Japanese beef is less safe than American beef, it’s that the chances of dying from mad cow disease, even in countries where there is very little testing of cows, is ridiculously low.
Wikipedia says that perhaps 400,000 BSE-infected cows entered the human food chain in the 1980’s(mostly in Europe), and there have been a mere 176 recorded cases of the disease infecting humans. The disease might take years to surface in the human body, but I’d think that more than 176 people would have died from that massive contamination of the food supply by now. Maybe a bunch of people had it, but died of old age before the disease could surface?
It’s worth noting that the use of grass feed in Australia, and the large percentage of American cattle that eat soybean feed instead of animal biproducts, reduce the chances of BSE surfacing in those countries. Tests for every cow should be implemented in America, but the restrictions on the kind of beef that can currently be imported into Japan(age of cows slaughtered, certain cuts of meat) are such that the chance of BSE meat entering Japan from America are close to zero. Yet major stores, consumers, and the media still buy into the hysteria.
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Indeed, it is sensational. Bring back my good old American dead cow. Yoshinoya here I come
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