KoAm Housewives Warn Motherland Against US Beef
A group of Korean-American housewives have released a statement opposing the full opening of the Korean market to US beef, reports the Kyunghyang Shinmun.
The group, called in Korean the “Korean-American Housewives Group Demanding Renegotiation of Beef Imports,” refuted point-by-point a May 7 statement by another Korean-American group supporting US beef. The group said it felt regret and fury over how some Korean-American are claiming US beef is safe. They expressed concern that the views of some Korean-American groups were being mistakenly conveyed as representative of all Korean-Americans.
The housewives said in their statement that even in the United States, insecurity about and distrust of US beef was growing. They noted that this year, there was a beef recall after a slaughterhouse illegally slaughtered a cow showing signs of Mad Cow Disease and distributed the meat all over the country, including to school cafeteria. They also cited another beef recall in Kansas last month.
The statement said the United States did not sufficiently inspect the safety of its beef; with less than 1% of US beef undergoing inspection for Mad Cow Disease, nobody could guarantee its safety.
Incidentally, one Korean-American housewife called up MBC’s “100 Minute Debate” last night to say much the same.
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I sure in the heck have a few questions here.
How many are in the group. How long have they lived in the USA.
If its past 10 years, shouldn’t they be dead already?
What do they serve their families in the USA?
How much of this meat have they themselves ate in the last so many years…..
The insanity just keeps moving on and on.
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What Will Really Kill Koreans
With all the uproar in Korea about how US beef is going to kill them, I find it interesting that on the front page of KBS they have an article on what is really going to kill Koreans:
A medical professor said Thursday that more than one million Koreans have died of smoking-related diseases since 1981.
In a recent study, Jee Sun-ha, professor of epidemiology and health promotion at the Graduate School of Public Health at Yonsei University, said that around 913-thousand Koreans died of smoking-related diseases between 1981 and 2007.
He estimated that the number had exceeded the one million mark this year.
Compared to non-smokers, men who smoke are found to be six and a half times more likely to have laryngeal cancer, four-point-six times more likely to have lung cancer, one-point-seven times more likely to have heart diseases, and one-point-six times more likely to suffer a stroke.
Female smokers had four-point-two times higher risk of getting ovarian cancer and other diseases. [KBS Global]
If you do the math on this that means over 37,000 Koreans die every year from smoking related diseases which comes out to 101 Koreans dieing every day from smoking. Some how I don’t see Koreans demanding the end to the selling of killer cigarettes in Korea like they are demanding of US beef.
Even funnier is that on the front page of the Chosun Ilbo is a story about how the Avian Bird Flu has reached Seoul:
The cause of the virulent strain of bird flu which broke out at an aviary run by the Gwangjin District Office in eastern Seoul is still unknown.
Tests were conducted on a pheasant dealer’s shop in the Moran Market in Seongnam, Gyeonggi Province and a poultry farm which were suspected by the Seoul city government and the Gwangjin District Office as possible sources of the disease. But the tests proved negative.
Officials from the Seoul city government and the Gwangjin District Office on Wednesday captured wild ducks living in the lake of Konkuk University campus, which is suspected as another possible source of the disease. The lake is located about 450 m from the infected aviary. The two authorities will send captured wild ducks to a lab for tests.
If the ducks turn out to be the source of the disease, there is a high chance that other wild birds in the vicinity have already been infected. This will make it all the more difficult to trace the cause of the disease and prevent its spread. [Chosun Ilbo]
So does anyone expect scaremongering surrounding the Avian Bird Flu start? I am also wondering if the Korean media is trying sublimely deliver a message to the Korean public by publishing these stories of how ridiculous the whole US beef issue is?
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