August 24, 2011

Japan's Miyagi resume beef cattle shipments

Miyagi Prefecture's farms resumed shipping beef cattle on Tuesday (Aug 22) following the removal of the shipment ban late last week.

Miyagi Prefecture lies immediately to the north of Fukushima Prefecture, which hosts the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, crippled by the March 11 earthquake-tsunami disaster.

Beef processed from the cattle shipped from Miyagi Prefecture will be auctioned off Friday (Aug 26) morning and sold to consumers and dealers if its safety is confirmed by private-sector laboratories which will check for contamination with radioactive substances.

The Miyagi prefectural government said 636 cattle farms in Miyagi Prefecture which did not use rice straw as feed were the first to get the green light to ship their cows.

Farms will be allowed to ship one cow per day for the time being. The local government said about 100 cows a day will be sent to meat centres in the cities of Sendai, capital of Miyagi Prefecture, and Tome, also Miyagi Prefecture.

The laboratories will check one kilogramme of beef per cow for contamination. The beef can be marketed if the amount of radioactive cesium detected is 50 becquerels or lower per kilogramme.

The prefectural government said 225 cattle farms which have been given contaminated rice straw to their cows will be required to submit all their cows for radiation checks. They will be allowed to ship their cows if the amount of radioactive cesium detected is below the government-set temporary upper limit of 500 becquerels per kilogramme.

On July 28, the central government instructed the Miyagi prefectural government to halt cattle shipments from the prefecture but lifted the ban last Friday (Aug 19).

The government instructed the Miyagi, Fukushima, Iwate and Tochigi prefectural governments between July and early August to ban cattle shipments. Miyagi was the first to be allowed to resume beef shipments.

On Friday, the central government decided not to lift the ban on cattle shipments from Fukushima Prefecture for some time as beef contaminated with excessive levels of radioactive cesium has been newly detected there.