What's the beef?

I'm not sure how the Western media might be treating this, but there have been protests across Korea over the importing of US beef. A month ago, I noticed a lot of images of "fallen cows" and such on the Korean news. Not understanding what was being said or written on the screen, I spoke to a few of my friends here. Even I believed that there was something going on with US beef. But no, the images that were being shown were from 5 years ago. Over the past few weeks, there have been protests (we saw one in Gwangju) and a candlelight vigil of some sort in Seoul (we saw people with similar candles in Mokpo too).


A bit of background info from Ty, who has been doing more research into this than I have:

Here's a bit of added info. Korea started importing beef from the US in the 70's. It was first banned after it was discovered in 2003 that a single cow in the States was carrying the disease. This was a precautionary measure, which is a sensible move. What was not widely circulated in the Korean press was that a )only this single case was discovered, and it never spread from there, and b) the cow was Canadian born.

Finally shipments of US beef started again in April 2007. The beef was regulated so that only the meat could be imported (no offal, nerves or bones) The reasoning behind this is sound. Parts other than the meat are way more likely to be carriers of BSE, and other bovine diseases. So again as a country trying to minimise risks this is sensible.

The problem is that amongst the general populace, very little was known except that the government had banned "bad" US beef. Very few were in a position to understand why imports were ever resumed. So when earlier this year imports were once again suspended due to vertebrae being found in a shipment, the public was in a very receptive mindset. In fact in a perfect mindset for MBC to run a madcow spin on the story. For the public to eat it up.

MBC is a media group which supports the liberal government and has been criticized in the past for running heavily skewed politically biased stories. They (MBC) were immediately called down by other media groups for running the madcow story and have since published a retraction of the story. But as with all sensationalist media, the page 10 retractions and quiet non-headline corrections are largely ignored by the masses.

Now, while the media is bringing all this to our attention, and spurring the masses into a frenzy over beef, there isn't much mention being made about Avian Flu. There are cases that have been reported throughout Korea, with at least one death in Naju (which is about 30 minutes from Mokpo), and a mass cull in Busan.... this website mentions that there has been no human infection as of yet, which contradicts other reports. The same website mentions that the government is allocating more funding towards, you guessed it, research into the dangers of mad cow instead of the very real threat of bird flu.