Bovine Blues
By Douglass P. Bacon
I like cows. They are peaceful and friendly animals, add a particular grace to rural landscapes, willingly provide milk for human health and nourishment, and emit a gentle sound (moo) designed to make us all feel better. And they taste pretty darn good.
Ever since my first teeth grew in, I have loved eating beef. Double cheeseburgers, Yankee pot roast, filet mignon, T-bone steaks, prime rib ― you name it, I've eaten it.
Like my Korean-American associates, I regularly eat Galbi (known here as LA ribs). Many of us believe that the meat lying next to the bone is the tastiest and most desirable.
For some reason, neither I nor the more than 250 million other Americans who regularly consume these treats have suffered from variant Creutzfeldt Jakob Disease (vCJD) attributable to an American cow.
Many of those living in America can't begin to fathom the hysteria sweeping South Korea about American beef.
However, having lived in Korea for more than four years and having a native-Korean wife, I understand the concerns Koreans feel about anything jeopardizing their health.
At the same time, I also recognize that Korean farmers, as do farmers throughout the world, want to protect their turf (no pun intended) and also that some Korean politicians, as do politicians throughout the world, like to create issues which will adversely affect the opposition party regardless of the damage it will inevitably do to their country and its citizens
I support the Korean government's wanting to change the beef agreement with America. While it will protect Koreans' right to limit their meat selection to some of the most expensive beef in the world, it will correspondingly reduce the pressure on supplies and prices of beef in the U.S.
However, any actions such as the massive demonstrations against U.S. beef may have consequences. The first is that the free trade agreement (FTA) negotiated in good faith between Korea and America is certainly dead in both the Korean National Assembly and the U.S. Congress.
While that will certainly please the farmers and some union leaders, the general working population ― which will find that declining trade with America may cost them their jobs ― may have a less enthusiastic view of the situation as it unfolds.
Another consideration is how the rest of the world views the validity of any South Korean agreements reached under international protocols. North Korea has an unenviable reputation of not living up to its agreements ― does South Korea want to be perceived as being on the same playing field as its disreputable northern neighbor?
If we want to ignore all of the above, there is no disputing that fair is fair. If Koreans don't want to import American beef due to the miniscule possibly of contracting vCJD, so be it, they know what they want and don't want and their judgment should not be questioned.
Nevertheless, Koreans should understand that Americans, amazingly, also have health concerns of our own such as toxic vapors which can cause serious problems.
Just a bit more than a year ago, far more recently than when the crazy Canadian cow was found in an American pasture, no less of a health-issues authority than the Korean Transportation Safety Authority released a report showing that then-currently-manufactured Korean automobiles had seriously elevated levels of benzene (a carcinogen), xylene, formaldehyde, and toluene.
Not only was the just-manufactured amount of these toxic substances far beyond acceptable levels, they increased ``up to eight times normal when the temperatures inside some vehicles rose."
In the spirit of reciprocity, if Korea rejects beef shipments because a minute fragment of bone is found within a large beef shipment, America should reject a boatload of Korean automobiles if evidence of any of the toxins known to be prevalent in Korean vehicles is found within the hold of the ship or in an individual automobile.
I suggest that these issues be laid to rest. There is not going to be a mass epidemic of vCJD in Korea and Americans aren't going to die from toxic vapors in Korean automobiles.
The only winner of the current turbulence will be North Korea, hardly known as a good friend to South Korea. The losers will be the Republic of Korea and the United States.
The writer lived in Korea for four years as a civil affairs officer on the 2nd Infantry Division's general staff and the USFK chief chemical defense officer. He earned a graduate degree in international relations from the University of Washington and served as a faculty member of Okaloosa-Walton College in Florida where he taught on the Korean Peninsula. He can be reached at divagate@bellsouth.net.