On the “US Beef Scare” in Korea

I wrote a comment on Marmot’s for the first time in a while, but the comment hasn’t shown up. (Perhaps the number of links in it got it caught in the filter.) So I thought I’d post it here, in case it doesn’t show up for a while yet.

WangKon936 posted about popular Korean concerns regarding the changes that Lee Myung Bak’s Administration has made to the regulations on the importing of American beef in the USA, restrictions put in place in 2003, and relaxed somewhat in 2006, out of fear of mad cow disease. His comments imply that Korean opposition to the import of American beef are mostly of a moral-panic type, and irrational, and he cites a couple of articles from the Chosun Ilbo to back up this opinion — if it deserves to be called an opinion. He also compares the real dangers of mad cow disease — which hasn’t killed many people yet, but does have a 100% fatality rate and is linked to completely avoidable agricultural practices that have long been known to be risky — to the admittedly irrational fear of “Fan Death” in Korea.

But the real kicker is the (predictable) backwash of snide commentary offered by all kinds of Marmot’s readers. It was especially unsettling to see people pile on the vitriol because I’d just come home from the demonstration downtown and had been blown away by it. People were respectful, peaceful, and in general wonderful — and considering my recent negative experience and current mood, that’s saying a lot.

I’ll post some more pictures of the demo in a bit. But here’s my main comment to the commenters at Marmot’s Hole, which, as I say, still hasn’t shown up, hopefully because of the links and not because of my harshness tripping some automated language filter:

UPDATE: Since my original comment is now visible there, and I’ve written more since, you can see all of my comments at Marmot’s. If you want to, you can read just the original text here, if you login first, but there’s more at Marmot’s, so…

You know, a lot of you commenters should stop pointing at the splinter in Koreans’ eyes and worry about the log in your own… the ignorance on display in these comments above is stunning, definitely the 뚝배기 calling the 냄비 black!Correct me (with references, not empty bluster and insults that so many here love to banter about) if I’m wrong, but:1. Roh’s Administration wasn’t the one that recently rescinded all beed-inspection duties to the USA, or opened the beef market completely to all US beef. Whatever Roh’s faults, it was Lee’s administration that has opened the market to Korean beef — and, as far as the public understands it, rescinded the majority of rights of inspection to American authorities, too — and when Lee was questioned about it, he was, let’s say, “evasive”… saying, “Oh, I think I did that in my sleep!” (here) and “Oh, have you found [those rights of inspection] yet?” (here) was how his patronizing attempts at humorous dismissal — which have angered many people — have gone.2. If Koreans are overreacting, then how come the US FDA enacted the biggest beef recall in history in February, and widened restrictions very recently to include pet food? Oh, yeah, no, there’s no problem. Korean people should just shut up, quit complaining, eat those “downer cows” that the American government has deemed unfit to feed American dogs and cats, because LMB, the GNP, and commenters at the Marmot’s say it’s okay, and just hope that there’s not an outbreak of CMJ here in thirty years. Right. Got it.(Of course, if there is an outbreak, I bet the same shameful subset of commenters will be snarkily mocking all the “sponge-brained Koreans” with as much glee their elderly forms can muster.)

3. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy is caused by prions. Prions are not e-coli, and no, they are not killed by adequate cooking or other normal food preparation. Sterilization is actually very difficult. So no, cooking your beef properly won’t remove the prions, unless you’re steaming it under high pressure for a long time. Oh, and by the way, it’s also heritable — 10-15% of cases are inherited. So if you’re lucky enough to catch it along the way, you can pass it on to your unborn children, too. And if your cattle population has a somatic outbreak,

4. The “Gene M” that was mocked by the poster isn’t a Korean pseudoscience fantasy — it’s actually a gene for the encoding of amino acids, and everyone has two alleles for it, encoding either methionine or valine or both. So you can be MM, MV, or VV depending on which alleles you have. 40% of humanity is MM, and is discussed here, and yes, the long and the short is that there is evidence that a genetic determinant for susceptibility exists. It hasn’t yet been demonstrated in humans, but there’s a reason we test with mice — a lot of results we find with them do apply to us in some way or other. So the Chosun’s claim that there’s no link is, really, downplaying the evidence. As for whether Koreans have a higher concentration of the MM pair, this article is the source of the 94% statistic. You’d think that finding would have been contested by someone since its peer-reviewed publication in 2004 if it were error-ridden, wouldn’t you? (It didn’t very take long for Dr. Hwang to be outed, did it, Jeffery? Or is Hwang now grounds to dismiss all scientific work by Koreans, or all work published in prestigious science journals? )

5. At the demonstration by the Cheonggyecheon tonight — which was peaceful, and predictably has not been discussed here at all — protesters shouted “조선일보쓰레기!” (“The Chosun Ilbo [is] garbage!”) and “동아일보 쓰레기!” (“The Dong-A Daily [is] Garbage!”). (Among many other chants inviting Lee to eat madcow beef, calling Lee a mad cow and a and garbage himself, and demanding that various media outlets wake up and think straight.)

How ironic that the people some of you were mocking for their naiveté were saying the same thing about the newspapers that y’all were saying (and so many of us think). I’m not naively saying all these people are paragons of reason — I’m sure lots of them believe in Fan Death, for example — but at the same time, they’re doing the best they can with what their education and society have given them, and they’re raising their voices on an issue on which, after all, their position isn’t unreasonable. It’s rather similar to the British population’s position, and we don’t mock the Brits in their cautiousness. Since when was that cause for mockery?

Frankly, it’s not surprising that y’all think it’s cool to mock Koreans in their desire not to import beef that may, yes, may, pose risks due to idiotic and rather ill-conceived agribusiness practices in the US and Europe. After all, the outbreak of CJD was mainly focused on Britain, but Britain outlawed the agricultural practices that seem to have led to it long ago, and the US dealt with it much later. Why should Koreans be happy to deal with the risks that American agribusiness gambled on, and has persisted in even when the writing was on the [British] wall?

By the way, personally, I found the demonstration tonight remarkable in a few ways: in that many young people showed up — I’m hearing estimates of 130,000 people and I’d believe it, as the area was so crowded many would-be participants couldn’t get in — and in that it was peaceful and very civil, in that people were engaged in some kind of response to media distortions of the facts.

It was actually pretty inspiring, to be honest. But hey, I know most of you want to snidely mock these people for voicing concerns and opinions. How dare they rise beyond your low, snide expectations.

For those of you who care to see what the people objecting really look like, another demo will occur at tomorrow 5pm by the “ddong-tap” (the ugly unicorn horn tower thing in the Cheongyecheon, right outside the Dong-A Ilbo.