Suspected radioactive Japanese cattle still untested

The Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry has been unable to track the distribution routes of nearly 3,000 cows whose meat is suspected to contain high levels of radioactive cesium, ministry officials said.

The ministry wanted to inspect the meat of 4,626 beef cattle from 15 prefectures because it suspected the animals were fed rice straw contaminated by radioactive substances released at the outbreak of the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear plant.

The meat of 1,630 cows--about 35 per cent--had been inspected as of Wednesday, but the ministry says the distribution routes of the remaining 2,996 animals remains unknown.

The ministry ordered the inspections in July last year, after discovering that beef from cows shipped from Fukushima Prefecture contained high levels of radioactive cesium.

Later that month, the ministry asked prefectural governments to conduct inspections and release the identification numbers of cows that were suspected to have been fed rice straw exceeding the government provisional limit of 300 becquerels per kilogram. The local governments carried out the inspections based on information on cattle sales by dealers and wholesalers.

But the ministry believes that some beef from among the 2,996 cattle had already been consumed by July. It also believes that suspect beef was consumed following instructions to test the meat, because checks were not carried out in time.

Beef from the 4,626 cows is known to have been shipped from 15 prefectures spanning from Hokkaido to Shimane Prefecture.

From July to October, the beef from 1,585 animals had been inspected, and meat from another 45 animals was tested in November, according to reports from prefectural governments. But there have been no inspections of beef from the remaining cattle.

The results from the inspections show meat from 105 cattle in six prefectures--6.4 per cent of the 1,630 animals tested--had radioactive cesium exceeding the government's provisional limit of 500 becquerels per kilogram.

By prefecture, 54 of the 105 cows were bred in Miyagi and 21 were shipped from Fukushima. Iwate had 16, followed by Tochigi with 10. Two each were from Yamagata and Akita.

"It took time for the local governments to conduct inspections when more than one prefecture were involved in the beef's shipment and distribution," a ministry official said.

A major factor contributing to the failure of local governments to specify the distribution routes for such a large number of cattle was probably the fact that the inspections were not legally binding, the official added.

The Iwate prefectural government has not determined the routes of more than 60 per cent of the 529 cows it was ordered to inspect. "As more time passes, we face more difficulties in following up where these cattle were distributed," a prefectural government official said. "But we'll continue our inspections as part of efforts to secure food safety."

Hisa Anan, the chief of the secretariat of the National Liaison Committee of Consumers' Organization, said: "It's irretrievably damaging that some people have consumed the uninspected beef. The government should provide an accurate explanation to consumers."

Hideaki Karaki, an expert in food safety and professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo, said the nation's meat distribution system makes it difficult for authorities to conduct investigations because carcasses are cut into parts that are sent to different areas. "To make matters worse, inspections were delayed and only began four months after the nuclear crisis," he said.

But Karaki said people should be calm despite fears that consumers have eaten the tainted beef. "People would not suffer any health damage unless they consumed a considerable amount of the meat," he said.