MidnightWatcher – Prophecy in Motion

“Revelations that radiation-contaminated rice straw used as feed for beef cattle was produced far away from the crippled Fukushima No. 1 Nuclear Power Plant have sent shockwaves through the livestock farming community in Fukushima Prefecture.

Consumers have also been filled with a sense of growing distrust in the government over delays in responding to the problem of radiation-tainted beef.

Forty-two beef cows that ate rice straw contaminated with radioactive cesium were found to have been shipped from a livestock farm in the Fukushima Prefecture town of Asakawa from April 8. The rice straw had been supplied by a farmer in Shirakawa, about 75 kilometers away from the tsunami-hit nuclear power station.

‘It’s unbelievable that this (contamination) occurred in an area so far away from the nuclear plant,’ said a 34-year-old man who has run a livestock farm in Minamisoma, Fukushima Prefecture, for nearly 10 years.

On July 8 the government asked livestock farmers in the city to refrain from shipping beef.

‘Fukushima-produced beef cows will no longer sell unless we switch to feed produced outside the prefecture and suspend shipments of beef cows until the safety of all feed produced in the prefecture is confirmed,’ the Minamisoma farmer said.

Officials with the local governments of areas to which the cows had been shipped were busy confirming meat distribution routes until late on July 14.” Read more.