Just three months after the restart of imports, US beef now accounts for almost half of total beef imports into Korea, reports Yonhap.
In terms of dollar amount, US beef accounted for 43% of total beef imports last month. In terms of tonnage, it accounted for 35%. And the numbers are rising quickly.
The primary victim — Aussie beef. Beef from Hojuland still accounted for 48% and 52% of total imported beef by dollar amount and tonnage, respectively, but this is way down from 77% and 72% in May.
Kiwi beef is also getting killed — it now places a distant third, at 8% and 11%.
In particular, the US beef’s impressive share by dollar is due to exporters focus on exporting high-value cuts like ribs.
On a related note, I watched “Midnight Meat Train” on Hana TV yesterday. Boy, that was some disturbing shit.
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One might think that by now, the Korean is tired of being right all the time.
Well, no. Being correct never gets old
Oh, here was the way I broke down the whole beef thing, if anyone is interested. Link
“Koreans wanted a government that cared about their health”
You’re still propagating the belief that US beef is a threat to Korean health. Even though it now accounts for half of imports into Korea. When will you ever stop?
You’re still propagating the belief that US beef is a threat to Korean health.
Factory-farmed U.S. beef is a threat to everyone’s health. Even if you don’t eat beef.
“It is not because Koreans are dumb enough to really believe those ridiculously crazy rumors about American beef.”
Come, come now, thekorean. I live in Korea, work in a company full of Koreans, and I KNOW that many of the people I work with swallowed the mad cow line. I agree with much else of what you say (though I think anti-American sentiment was a bigger factor than you seem to acknowledge), but to imagine that a wise and knowing populace saw through the dodgy science and merely latched onto it to punish the Lee administration, seems to me like wishful thinking.
I KNOW that many of the people I work with swallowed the mad cow line
The number of Americans who swallow the line that America’s factory farmed beef is safe is probably a lot higher. Hundreds of Americans die every year from e coli and other goodies but the Marmot’s Hole chorus sings how stupid Koreans are for going crazy about Mad Cow. Obama says American beef is the safest in the world so it must be true. He’s the messiah.
http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/vol3no3/mahon.htm
“Hundreds of Americans die every year from e coli and other goodies but the Marmot’s Hole chorus sings how stupid Koreans are for going crazy about Mad Cow.”
Just to be clear, I am claiming nothing about what Americans believe, nor saying that Koreans are stupid. But I don’t think any purpose is served by pretending Koreans somehow faked a belief in the “dangers” of being infected with mad cow disease.
“Factory-farmed U.S. beef is a threat to everyone’s health. ”
I suppose you are a strict vegan?
“User” is partly correct in that American beef is not as safe as the USDA and a host of meat industry umbrella organizations claim. Despite the attempt by T. Roosevelt to impose public health and safety controls on the meat industry, the industry has uncontested control over the USDA and lawmakers that have a voice in public health and safety matters. The problems in the meat industry have been greatly under-reported — especially since the industry went after Oprah Winfrey. Though the meat industry lost that unjust suit against Winfrey, the heavy -handed lawyer action served to strike fear into the hearts of any news organization that might dare to report on the problems and affairs of the meat industry. The U.S. meat industry is not run by a love of money and not public health concerns. To believe so is as bad as some of the supposed facts that were being circulated during the mad cow mania in Korea.
Despite my disgust with the mindless mania that ensued, the Korean public expressed their fear — even if half of the information was without scientific merit — and the public did have the right to demand more scrutiny of the meat deal. It is a tremendous pity that any real concerns regarding the high-handed approach to dealing with the public were side-tracked by the sneaky rabid leftist elements that helped orchestrate the mad cow mania.
I suppose you are a strict vegan?
Ad hominem arguments aside what point would you make if I were? How would that change if I weren’t? Would me being a vegan make my argument less valid? Less true? More true?
Even people who eat vegetable diets are put in danger by factory-farmed beef.
Spinach E. coli linked to cattle: Manure on pasture had same strain as bacteria in outbreak
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/.....LOT711.DTL
http://www.washingtonpost.com/.....01364.html
http://www.slate.com/id/2150536/
#8, R. Elgin I agree with everything you wrote (and not just your agreement with what I wrote) including the part about “rabid leftist elements”.
What puts so many people at MH in the same league as the Mad Cow whiners is that everyone spent months talking about how stupid the protesters were but when Obama says things like “obviously, we have the highest safety standards of anybody” almost no one here at the Hole thinks twice about that. It’s a lie. It’s a big lie to justify forcing Korea (and Japan) to import the product of a powerful political contributor in Washington. It kills Americans and it will kill Koreans.
And maybe Korean beef is doing the same. Maybe runoff from Korea’s factory farms wherever they are is getting into the vegetable supply and killing people too. I haven’t seen it but it’s possible it’s happening at least a little. But Korea’s pales in comparison to America’s factory farmed cattle industry so U.S. beef is the much bigger problem.
Have any of you morons decrying the dangers of “factory farmed” US beef every actually seen the conditions in which are Korean cattle are raised?
and yet, for some strange reason I still have a hard time finding American beef for sale nor do I see a drop in meat prices.
On the other hand there are more folks than ever purporting to sell me Australian beef at the same old prices… hmmmm…
12/captbbq, there certainly has been a drop in beef products… my public school cafeteria has announced that beginning in November they will only use hanwoo beef, without affected the 2800 won price.
On a total sidenote, I recently had a discussion with my mother, since I was diagnosed with a type of IBS (and its hereditary), how cow proteins can have a negative effect on the body. Apparently cow proteins are too similar as proteins already existing in human bodies and since they are present in any dairy product show up in a wide variety of food… mostly because cow cheese is so pervasive in almost anything we eat (cheese, bread, cakes). Human evolution has not reached a stage that we should be consuming so much bovine produce…
A lot of people who were protesting, based their judgments on the report of PD SuCheop (PD수첩). The footage of a sick cow that could hardly stand, being taken to slaughter was the real kill shot. Especially since they were implicating that the cow had Mad Cow Disease, and that even cows in this condition were being slaughtered for export by the US. PD SuCheop gained the trust of a lot of Koreans when they exposed Dr. Hwang WooSeok for the fraud that he really was. So I don’t think it was a stretch for many Koreans to easily believe that importing US beef was hazardous to public health. Yes many Koreans over reacted, but can you really blame us after seeing a report like that.
Corpy Carly wrote:
Have any of you morons decrying the dangers of “factory farmed” US beef every actually seen the conditions in which are Korean cattle are raised?
Have you, moron? I haven’t seen a cattle farm in Korea besides what I’ve seen driving by small cattle or dairy farms in the countryside (which did not indicate factory farming). It was very different from what I’ve seen on some farms in the U.S.
But you know what, moron? I even admitted the possibility that Korean cattle and dairy might be produced on factory farms. Right in the paragraph where you called me a moron for “decrying the dangers of factory farmed U.S. beef”.
You know what else, moron? Calling me a moron doesn’t make American beef any safer than it is? Calling me a moron doesn’t protect American crops from e. coli contamination from runoff from giant American cattle farms that produce 99 cent double cheeseburgers at McDonald’s or 99 cent burgers at Wendy’s.
You know what else, moron? Your tu quoque argument about “ever actually seeing the conditions in which are Korean cattle are raised” also does nothing to make factory farmed American beef less of a major health hazard.
Here’s one more thing, moron. When someone like me “decrying the dangers of factory farmed U.S. beef” we are not saying all U.S. beef is factory farmed.
You’re just like the VANK people only in reverse. I’m sorry I criticized a bad American product. Please stop calling me names.
Right in the paragraph where you called me a moron …
Right in the paragraph above where you called me a moron
and yet, for some strange reason I still have a hard time finding American beef for sale
Because a lot of the cheaper beef is going into the cheap beef products for the masses. That’s one of the points the critics made: they would have no choice in avoiding American beef because it would end up being an unlabeled substitute for Australian or Korean beef.
Does McDonald’s in Korea still advertise they use 100% Australian beef? If they don’t then I’ll bet a Big Mac they are using American beef and probably without labeling it American.
(McDonald’s reportedly avoids the use of mass antibiotics in the beef it gets from suppliers which is a big step toward ending one of the most potentially hazardous practices of factory farmed beef.)
i think the Korean is wrong.
I think the Korean natives genuinely GENUINELY believed the US Empire was selling them meat unsuitable for human consumption.
sure, there was a component about the LMB govt giving in way too easy in negotiations, etc,
but the major fear was CJD. This despite, US gyopos claims of eating US beef everyday and getting fat.
I’ve never noticed the Korean criticizing the LMB govt the way he criticizes the US govt. That’s the hypocrisy I’m pointing out, and the more that makes the Korean uncomfortable, the better.
today, I think the American churches start handing out voter guides. They don’t tell you who to vote for. That’s illegal and strips them of NPOrganization status. A valuable status that exempts them from various to all govt taxes. Simply lists what Reps, Senators, and President candidates stand on churchy issues.
Unless one is brain dead, the obvious choice is not Obama. But, if one is “spiritually” dead, or so race conscious to overlook that stuff (the African American community, showing Jeollado like 99%+ dedication to one candidate), they will vote for Obama on that note.
on the fact that theKorean is wrong on this issue,
I think even my classic enemies would agree on.
Koreans as a group were genuinely afraid of CJD”.”
There is only one country in the world which protested US beef to this extent. The same country dicredited its international image further by allowing China to actually poison it/smack them around in their own capital city. The best Korea could do right now is try to delete any information about this years protest.
There is only one country in the world which protested US beef to this extent.
The protests were more about LMB than about America or about health concerns.
The same country dicredited its international image further by allowing China to actually poison it/smack them around in their own capital city.
Good try, but the Chinese have been poisoning everybody. Do you think someone’s going to step back from the global anti-Chinese clusterfuck going on right now and say, “Hey, everybody! Look at what the Chinese did to the Koreans!”?
/smack them around in their own capital city.
#15
Funny, I don’t recall making an “argument” in my one-sentence post. I do recall insulting your intelligence for your facile argument that US beef (“Factory-farmed U.S. beef is a threat to everyone’s health”) is somehow a looming threat to the health of the 민족.
I don’t know anything about you or the life you’ve lived or whether you know the first thing about agriculture. I don’t know if you have any idea what pasturage or silage is. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed there’s a distinct shortage of land in South Korea or that South Korean farmers have quite reasonably focused on growing high yield crops on their postage stamp sized farms. I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed there’s a distinct absence of pasturage or silos in the Korean countryside.
Now, I’ll pose you a question: what is the primary distinction we use when talking about whether beef is grain-fed or grass-fed? Ah, whether the cow ate grain or grass when it was raised! Wow, that’s pretty simple, isn’t it?
Here’s another giant leap of logic you’ll have to make: if there is almost no pasturage in South Korea, what then might the cattle raised there eat? Remember the two options…I guess that would be grain then. Which means most Korean cattle are “factory-farmed” if your criteria for judging that are that they’re primarily grain-fed and consequently require antibiotics for the acidosis they suffer from eating low fiber grains.
In the future it’d be nice if you’d limit your argument to whether beef, not US or Korean beef, is safe. Is that tu quoque enough for ya?
I’m not saying that every technique used by factory farms is wonderful; I’m sure lots of things can be improved, and they probably will be because of complaints by people like u-81, but I do wonder about using the term “factory farms” as some kind of dirty word. The implication is that “factory farms” in themselves are a bad thing. How else could billions of people get better food (for the most part) than they’ve ever had? Is there a real alternative to factory farming? Should we go back to the days when we all farmed our own little plot of land? Milk our own cows? Butcher our own animals? Would that make things better for the majority of people? I suppose a lot of us would have to die first to make that a realistic possibility. More people are living longer, healthier lives than ever in history. I wonder how that’s possible with our terrible food supply.
johnnyh,
Right on. It’s funny how people keep living longer despite the evils of modern agriculture, isn’t it?
Corpy Carly:
In the future it’d be nice if you’d limit your argument to whether beef, not US or Korean beef, is safe. Is that tu quoque enough for ya?
Corpy Carly you are the one making “leaps of logic”. You either have poor reading skills or you have VANK-like sensitivity about criticisms of anything in America if you read “factory-farmed U.S. beef” and think it’s about any U.S. beef.
(And when I said factory-farmed American beef is a danger to everyone I was obviously making a point made that even if you don’t eat beef your health can be endangered by factory farming practices: “Factory-farmed U.S. beef is a threat to everyone’s health. Even if you don’t eat beef.”)
Factory-farmed animals hopped up on antibiotics and hormones and creating sewage problems that seep into the water supply and wash over non-meat in the food supply on other farms is a hazard wherever it occurs. If that occurs in Korea then it’s a problem there too.
I brought up the possibility that Korean has some factory-farmed beef even before you called me a moron for :
I believe the problem is much larger in the U.S. so that’s a bigger concern especially when the factory farmers are competing with local and international producers who might have more sustainable methods.
Anyway the “choice” thrust upon Korean consumers is not so much between American meat producers and Korean farmers who lack silage or pasturage (and lagoons!) but between Australian and American meat producers.
How else could billions of people get better food (for the most part) than they’ve ever had? Is there a real alternative to factory farming? Should we go back to the days when we all farmed our own little plot of land?
jonnyh, you have been misled into thinking it’s an either/or case. You are also conflating large-scale farms with factory farming which are not always the same thing.
Do we really need to force down the price of beef to accommodate 99 cent double cheeseburgers in our already obese society but wreak long-term environmental and medical havoc in the process? Maybe factory farming and excess are preventing us from having even longer lives that we would get from medical advancements (which is a bigger reason for increased longevity in a society like ours). Maybe it’s not a good idea to make antibiotics ineffective by using them preemptively just to make cheap beef and pork. Right now everything’s just fine but is the current state a sustainable one? No, not really.
User-81:
“You either have poor reading skills or you have VANK-like sensitivity about criticisms of anything in America if you read “factory-farmed U.S. beef” and think it’s about any U.S. beef.”
Huh? Poor reading skills? You ought to work on basic sentence construction before criticizing the reading skills of others. I’ll let that little jewel of yours stand as a monument to incomprehensibility.
You ought to work on basic sentence construction before criticizing the reading skills of others. I’ll let that little jewel of yours stand as a monument to incomprehensibility.
Yeah, that’s not the best sentence I’ve ever written. And my hat’s off to you for calling me a moron based on something I would write ten hours into the future.
Monument to incomprehensibility redone: You either have poor reading skills (since you didn’t understand that I also left open the possibility that some Korean beef producers are engaged in factory-farming) or you have sensitivity to national issues on par with VANK, since you read “factory-farmed beef” and assumed I was criticizing any and all American beef.
But by now I think we’re on the same page: factory farming of beef, if it is to be criticized, should be criticized wherever it is found, although I believe it is a bigger problem in the U.S. than in Korea.
Is that fair? Group hug!
Group hug? What the hell, spread the love!
user-81 …a side line if I may…if you have driven through the country side here in Korea, and seen beef farms, you might also notice how close to the road these farms ( and the farms producing their feed, and your vegitables/fruits) happen to be…and although the beef may not be free range or factory, one should be concerned over the amount of polutants they are breathing and eating, and how much e-coli from using human waste is being dumped on their food/your food as fertilizer. My point?…..I think if people are to be concerned about food, they need not look too far from their own domestic sources to hit the streets.
All food is dangerous and can kill you. As such, I gave up eating a long time ago and now have much more peace of mind.
LOL Wedge..everything is a poison, it only the dose that differs
wjk
“Koreans as a group were genuinely afraid of CJD”
Are you implying that Koreans as a whole are a single thought entity. That we were all saying, “Resistance is futile, US beef will kill you.”
Just because many were protesting in the streets it doesn’t mean they represent all Koreans. To some of my friends and also my parents (who are almost sixty) and many more, the candlelight vigils was just something you see on the news, they felt no need to or motivation to join in. Some of my friends did genuinely believe that US beef was dangerous, but some of them also showed some perspective by saying that we’ve been eating it for several decades, if it’s such a risk way hasn’t anybody gotten sick yet.
Also some small groups of people were protesting the protesters for protesting. To prove their point they opened up a grill, cooked up some US beef and ate it for all to see.
As for me? For about ten years, I had been brainwashed by herd mentality into thinking that electric fans were deadly. I was a real stupid fuck for believing it just because it was in the news. But even I wasn’t caught up in the hype, if you served up some US beef then I would of ate it. I still have no problem eating it now either.
To some of my friends and also my parents (who are almost sixty) and many more, the candlelight vigils was just something you see on the news, they felt no need to or motivation to join in.
I have a friend who broke up with her boyfriend because he became obsessed with demonstrating against Mad Cow. She and most of her friends thought the demos were stupid.
Ad hominem? Doesn’t that mean an argument against the man? I would suggest that mad cow protestors (and you) were indeed protesting against “the man.” If the man hadn’t been an American man, nobody would have cared. (Viz. melamine in Chinese-made snacks in Korea vis a vis. total lack of protests in Korea against the Chinese.) Ipso facto ergo sum omnibus inflragante delecto.
It would be utterly impossible to kill all the cows. Wash your veggies and your undies, they are in a bunch!
“But, if one is “spiritually” dead…”
There are many spiritual paths. Religion is merely one of them.
“, or so race conscious to overlook that stuff (the African American community, showing Jeollado like 99%+ dedication to one candidate), they will vote for Obama on that note.”
Actually, the ones who are the most race conscious are the ones who won’t vote for Obama because he’s Muslime…err, I mean black.
Correction, Muslim (no pun was intended, really was a typo).
If the man hadn’t been an American man, nobody would have cared. (Viz. melamine in Chinese-made snacks in Korea vis a vis. total lack of protests in Korea against the Chinese.)
The candlelight vigils are a tool of the pro-Pyongyang far left. They are used against the government and against the Americans, not against North Korea or China or ROK leftists.
The middle and right don’t have candlelight vigils. They have jobs and responsibilities. They also shop, and when they go to the store, they will look for 중국산 on the package and buy something else. That’s their protest.
#36: Nice attempt at fatwah dodging. It won’t do any good, though, as the original post will be taken out of context.
Too many of you commenters have a short memory. Go back and read “sonagi”s comments on the U.S. food industry, in general and diet, that she has posted in earlier threads. She addressed some of the problems with the beef-intensive diet found in the U.S. and its impact upon society (health problems). Frankly speaking, the U.S. has a big problem with a food culture that is driven by the food industry rather than having developed a native food culture as one might find in Japan or Korea. It would probably help Americans if they just went on and adopted much of Korean food culture, which is focused more on vegetables and normally has far less beef. Think of this the next time you find yourself sitting, looking at food in an Applebys or whatever franchised food shack in the U.S, surrounded by hefty looking people.
I quit eating anyone’s beef (only) six years back and I feel better, don’t worry about it and have saved money too.
Simply a transfer of risk.
http://www.wjgnet.com/1007-9327/11/3175.pdf
I keep seeing this message:
“You must be logged in to post a comment.”
Well, now I am logged in but have nothing to say.
Must be the fault of the Mad Cow Disease that I’ve contracted ever since the floodgates to US beef were reopened…
Jeffery Hodges
* * *
#39
“It would probably help Americans if they just went on and adopted much of Korean food culture?”
So you are saying Americans should adopt Korean food culture. That’s confusing? How is eating RaMyun, JokBal, JjaJjangMyum, hamburgers, pizza, fried chicken, EoMuk, DdeokBbokGi, SoJu, Beer, PokTanJu, Cola gonna help Americans live healthy? Cause that’s the Korean food culture they have been eating here lately. And have you seen Koreans chucking down meat at a grill restaurant. (BTW, what would be correct way to express 고기집 in English.)
“It would probably help Americans if they just went on and adopted much of Korean food culture?”
Spitting in ashtrays at the table would help Americans?
The food you have mentioned is not part of the traditional Korean food culture “jewook”. Much of the food you have mentioned is an influence from the West and has lead to a obvious increase in some of the hefty kids I see around Seoul.
Koreans should seriously leave that crap behind them unless they want the same problems Americans, Brits and now some Greeks have with weight, hypertension, etcetera:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09.....4diet.html
44
Well “R. Elgin” maybe you should have put the word “traditional” in front of the phase “Korean food culture” to make a clearer distinction, so that there would be no leeway for me to poke fun at it. Anyways the food culture of any country is always in flux, tastes changes and different foods gain and loose popularity. You can’t just say ‘food culture’ and assume that everyone will understand it as traditional food and not popular food.
Also traditional Korean food isn’t always healthy. You can easily get a salt overdose from eating a single traditional meal. If you were to eat rice, DwoenJangJjiGae, fried fish, and several Kimchis, which is one example of a traditional meal, it would put you way over the ideal daily salt intake allowance. And traditionally 기름진 음식 (food that is oily or has fatty meat) is considered the most delicious. 명절 음식 (New Years and Thanksgiving food) is also notorious for being unhealthy.
And I don’t see how RaMyun, JokBal, JjaJjangMyum, EoMuk, DdeokBbokGi, SoJu can be called food of western influence.
R. Elgin
Forget the last sentence of my previous comment. It’s way past little Jewook’s bedtime.
Where’s the beef?
Here: http://www.usmef.co.kr/
An oldie but goodie:
http://kr.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug75diEyiA0
How much was a Wendy’s Single in 1984? I think it was 99 cents. A similar burger at Wendy’s today is 99 cents.
99 cents in 1984 is $2.11 today. How nice that mass production of meat has cut in half the cost of a burger (McDonald’s value menu has double cheeseburgers for $1). But don’t think we’re not paying for this somewhere else because it’s not sustainable.
Environmental damage and biomedical damage: people should be alarmed that the meat industry has gotten approval to use one of our few “last-resort antibiotics”, against the advice of medical experts because it makes it much more likely for resistance to be developed. So the factory farming of corn-fed beef to get you that 99 cent burger is taking away some of our last lines of defense in infectious disease in humans.
http://www.rjkoehler.com/2008/.....ent-151928
Tit for tat?
http://english.kbs.co.kr/news/.....2008102710
Speaking of farm animals, this is interesting:
New York Times Article.
KBS makes “zeroing” sound like an unfair trade practice. Is it?
Do you suppose there’s a cause-effect relationship between the reduction in food prices and increased calorie intake? Until the recent rise in food prices, groceries consumed about 11% of the average American’s budget, one of the lowest among OECD nations.
Do you suppose there’s a cause-effect relationship between the reduction in food prices and increased calorie intake?
Maybe. I think the reduction in cost of fattening and processed foods might be a factor in obesity and other health problems especially among the poor.
“US Beef Accounts for Nearly Half of Beef Imports”
I would also guess tough it only is accounted 10% of the time as being American beef in labelling/pricing.
user-81
“the meat industry has gotten approval to use one of our few “last-resort antibiotics”, against the advice of medical experts because it makes it much more likely for resistance to be developed.”
That is very shocking news. I wonder how they can be so negligent.
Guess a man made plague will kill off half of humankind after all. That could be good news for the planet though, it will cut our carbon dioxide emissions in half. :*)
That is very shocking news. I wonder how they can be so negligent.
It is shocking. How can they be so negligent? The Bush administration has a lot of people who think they can make their own reality. They do not understand or trust science but they have faith that the free market will make everything right. But we don’t have a free market but instead we have big business and government involved in influence peddling.
The Washington Post link provides a scary picture. We don’t want to think about it but five or ten or twenty years down the road you or someone you know might die from this.
IOW people have to actually die before they officially recognize that it’s not a good idea to indiscriminately use these drugs in the beef industry but by then the drugs will have lost their potency.
I noticed recently that some of the restaurants where I go to for lunch don’t use the low-fat Australian beef that I like so much in the dishes that I order. I’ll take that as an indication that they’ve switched to American beef, which Koreans prefer because it is fattier like Korean beef.
“It would probably help Americans if they just went on and adopted much of Korean food culture?”
You do know that the sauce for jajjangmyeon is made with lard, right?
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