Why Can't American Beef Be Eaten? 4 Reasons Reveal the Truth

Text/ Lin Yingqiu

This year marks a US presidential election year, and Obama's road to re-election has been arduous, leading the powerful political influence of the US livestock industry to reach across the Pacific through diplomatic means and pressure Taiwan to relax its lean meat powder residue standards, leaving people unable to resist. But American beef, when considered in terms of food safety and public health, is by no means the consumer's best choice.

Nobel Prize winner who studied mad cow disease  openly declares he does not dare eat American beef

However, many people must wonder: American beef tastes so delicious, so why is "American beef not beautiful"? First, consumers must risk their lives to eat American beef that still carries the shadow of mad cow disease.

Besides the fact that the United States is still a mad cow disease epidemic area, where beef handled improperly can still pose a risk of causing illness if eaten, and once the disease is confirmed, it is fatal. More importantly, Taiwan has ceded its "quarantine sovereignty" and handed all core mad cow disease testing work to the US side; after beef enters Taiwan, only animal drugs, pesticide residues, heavy metal residues, and microbiological testing are sampled.

But in July 2005, Japan used US testing methods and standards to test Japanese sick cattle, and of 20 sick cattle, 9 could not be detected as diseased. In addition, after the US outbreak, the sampling rate for cattle slaughtered for consumption was low, less than 0.06%, and even S. Prusiner, who spent more than 20 years studying mad cow disease and other brain neurological disorders and was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1997 for it, publicly declared that he did not dare eat American beef.

Second, more than 90% of American cattle are injected with hormones, and eating too much can easily cause cancer.

According to statistics, the breast cancer rate among American women is 45% higher than in Europe, and the prostate cancer rate among men is also twice as high as in Europe. Research by Carlos Sonnenschein, a professor at Tufts University in Boston, believes that hormones in meat are very likely the cause of these high cancer rates. And the European Union has banned the import of hormone-containing American beef since 1989.

In contrast, Taiwan's Council of Agriculture once stated clearly in a 1999 press release that hormone residues in American beef did indeed cause controversy, but Taiwan has still not included hormone residues in imported American beef as a testing item. Interestingly, Taiwanese cattle are banned from being given hormones, so they cannot poison Taiwanese people, but American cattle can.

E. coli O157 is not among the testing items

Third, American cattle eat corn feed, and their intestines easily develop E. coli O157, which can contaminate food and cause death.

O157 is one type of E. coli, commonly found in the intestines of warm-blooded animals such as cattle, and releases strong toxins that may cause severe intestinal symptoms, such as severe watery diarrhea, bloody diarrhea, fever, abdominal cramps, and vomiting. In severe cases, it may be complicated by acute kidney disease, and if treated improperly, it can be fatal.

This pathogen can enter the human body through drinking water or food. If one eats undercooked and contaminated American beef and hamburgers, infection is easy. In addition, cattle feces can also contaminate milk, cheese, vegetables, juice, and dairy products, and if personal hygiene habits are poor, it may also be transmitted from person to person. At present, many countries in Europe, America, Australia, Africa, and Japan have all seen cases of collective food poisoning or death caused by food contaminated with E. coli O157. But E. coli O157 is not among the testing items for American beef imported into Taiwan.

Lean meat powder makes the "three controls and five checks" fail

Fourth, there is the recently most fiercely debated lean meat powder, of which ractopamine is one type. Lean meat powder is a chemical additive and has been announced by the government as a banned animal drug. Eating too much of it affects the health of both animals and humans.

At present, 24 countries worldwide including the United States permit the use of ractopamine, while more than 160 countries ban it, including Japan and Taiwan. Ractopamine can promote protein synthesis, enabling animals to rapidly grow lean meat and have less fat. Also, because modern people want to eat healthily, cattle and pigs that use lean meat powder have better appearance, and raising them is more profitable.

Under strong pressure from the United States, Japan allows the import of pork containing ractopamine, but Japanese pigs are banned from using it, which is quite intriguing.

And Taiwan's Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine under the Council of Agriculture listed ractopamine among the banned animal drugs announced in 2006. Once pig farmers are found using banned drugs, they can be sentenced to 4 months imprisonment according to law. But since last year, American beef imported into Taiwan was actually found to contain ractopamine. Although it was removed from shelves and returned as soon as it was detected, the same batch of meat had already flowed into the market and been eaten, making it difficult to trace the flow of the problematic meat, causing the government's control measures, which had vowed to implement "three controls and five checks" last year to relax the import of bone-in American beef, to effectively fail.

Although the United States hopes Taiwan will relax lean meat powder standards, and Council of Agriculture Minister Chen Baoji also proposed before taking office the idea of following the "Japanese model," banning it domestically while opening it externally, showing a strong intention to loosen restrictions, academia, the medical field, consumers, and pig farmers strongly oppose it. If the government wants to force it through, it will not be easy, because the government's already bankrupt credibility will probably be difficult to repair for a while.

Even though American beef is so unsettling, the United States still used diplomatic and economic pressure to set a record high export volume in 2010, with export value reaching 4.08 billion US dollars, breaking the 3.86 billion US dollar record before the mad cow disease outbreak appeared in 2003. That year, Taiwan's imports of American beef also hit a new high, including 34.05 million kg of boneless beef, 1.12 million kg of bone-in beef, and 180,000 kg of beef tendons.

Taiwanese people love to eat American beef, but American beef is really not beautiful. Consumers should not expect the government to strictly guard the gate, but they must, for the sake of their own health, stand up to protect their right to "eat safely." And when the government conducts "risk communication" with the people, please do not forget the spirit of "sovereignty resides in the people," and do not try to exchange national health for a ticket to TIFA (Taiwan-US Trade and Investment Framework Agreement).

This article is simultaneously published at http://www.new7.com.tw/NewsView.aspx?t=03&i=TXT201202151844328M7