A comment from a reader of this blog

Terry S. Singeltary Sr. left this comment:

well, so the U.S. slams the mad cow door on Korea and it’s people, due to the bungled beef deal the USDA shoved down Lee’s throat. sadly, Lee signed the deal oblivious to what really has been going on behind closed doors for years here in the USA, and the USDA et al knew they had a fish on the line. my God, this guy was totally ignorant of what they were doing. now the kind honorable people of Korea will be force fed USDA certified beef. beef that has been highly suspect of mad cow disease since the USDA shut down testing, this after finding two cases of the atypical BSE in Alabama and Texas. remember, atypical BSE is more virulent than the UK BSE strain. Also, it seems the O.I.E. has sealed the deal on trading all strains of TSE i.e. mad cow disease strains globally, all for a buck, commodities and futures, to hell with human health. it’s business as usual folks, eat up, and die old and demented, if your lucky. I must apologize to the kind honorable citizens of Korea for what my Government has done. I tried. But as the USDA certified beef starts to flood Korean markets, remember one thing Korea, you don’t have to buy it. let it rot, until the USDA et al gets there head out of their pockets, and start to test all food producing cattle and all livestock for BSE and all TSE. CJD is a slow death while incubating. so you will not see the body bags all at once. as in the past here, it will be labeled as dementia, misdiagnosed as Alzheimer’s and other dementia ailments. it will become an acceptable death as here in the USA due to the push by the industries and your Government due to the financial aspect of it. The OIE and my Government sold their souls to the devil, and if you don’t believe me, just read the history. let it all be sporadic and or spontaneous they say, and make them eat it, and like it. that’s their motto. to hell with the consumer. Every American and Korean consumer should be demanding 100% BSE/TSE mad cow testing on all livestock food producing animals, for humans and animals. This should be a no-brainer, but instead, it’s a brain eater.

Terry thinks that Koreans shouldn’t buy U.S. beef and then they’ll all be fine. I wish the problem was as simple and convenient as that. The reason that the U.S. beef issue has caused such an uproar among Koreans is that some groups of people including school children will inevitably be exposed to the risks of eating U.S. beef unbeknown to them. The private companies that run school lunch programs and some low-end restaurant owners will use U.S. beef so as to increase profit margins at the expense of the health of their customers. And as we noted earlier, the South Korean government doesn’t have enough resources to make sure that American beef will not be sold as domestic beef or hanwoo.