Shoppers Struggle to Sort Out the Truth About Risks in Chicken and U.S. Beef
By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, June 7, 2008
SEOUL -- It's been a spooky spring in the beef-and-poultry aisle. South Korean shoppers have had to wrestle with risks real and rumored, domestic and imported, pathogenic and political.
More than 6 million fowl were exterminated to halt a nationwide epidemic of bird flu. The cull included every single known chicken, duck and goose in greater Seoul.
The strain of Asian bird flu that swept across South Korea, it turned out, was different from that found in Vietnam and Indonesia, which in rare cases jumps to humans and sometimes kills them.
Risky or not, poultry consumption plunged. The chicken business here lost about $6 billion in two months. It nearly ground to a halt after a report that a South Korean soldier might have been infected with bird flu. He wasn't. Indeed, no humans were.
The head of the Korea Chicken Foodservice Association, Yoon Hong-geun, said the chicken trade has picked up smartly in the past couple of weeks, mostly because scary stories about chicken were elbowed out of the news by scary stories about beef.
To keep current on beef, a conscientious shopper in this country needs a microbiology textbook, a political pollster and a scorecard.
In April, just before meeting with President Bush in Washington, newly elected President Lee Myung-bak lifted a 4 1/2 -year ban on the import of U.S. beef. He said it no longer posed a threat of infecting Koreans with mad cow disease.
On Tuesday, after weeks of street protests, plunging poll numbers and panic in his party, Lee changed his mind and reimposed part of the ban. That, in turn, riled the United States. U.S. Ambassador Alexander Vershbow tut-tutted Koreans for ill-informed fears and suggested that they "learn more about the science."
And that riled a great many South Koreans, who interpreted the ambassador's remarks as an insult to a society where students have for years been among the top achievers in international science testing, far ahead of the United States.
Vershbow apologized Thursday, saying, "I have the highest regard for the educational level of Koreans and respect their concerns about food safety."
So, where does all this leave a homemaker who wants to feed her family?
"I stopped buying chicken months ago," said Min Hoo-hwa, 37, who was shopping this week for her husband and 6-year-old daughter.
"I would never, never buy American beef. I have stopped buying Australian beef. I buy only Korean beef, although it is more expensive."
Expensive it is.
At the meat counter of the E-Mart supermarket in central Seoul, Min paid $20 for slightly less than a pound of medium-quality sliced beef. That's about triple the price of imported Australian beef, which was on sale a few feet away.
American beef, if it ever returns to grocery store shelves here, would be as cheap as or cheaper than Australian meat, experts say.
Before 2003, when the first case of mad cow disease in the United States was found in an aging Canadian-born dairy cow in Washington state, South Korea was the third-largest importer of U.S. beef.
If Park Jung-mee, 53, a housewife with three children, has her way, American beef will never return to South Korea.
She was buying chicken at the E-Mart, having read, she said, that a well-cooked chicken poses no threat to human beings.
As for eating U.S. beef, Park was equally sure -- from watching South Korean television and talking to her neighbors -- that it is a very risky business.
"I have heard that American farmers are feeding bits of cow meat to their cows -- eating their own species," she said.
She had not heard that that practice has been banned in the United States since 1997 or that enforcement of the ban was tightened after the first mad cow case in 2003. Only two other U.S. cases have been reported since.
Park was also fuming about what she viewed as the bad behavior of the U.S. ambassador. "I am angry at him for telling Koreans not to worry," she said.
When it comes to beef, Park said, Korean is clearly safest and most delicious.
"It's softer and it melts in your mouth," she said. But she wasn't buying any and her family doesn't eat much beef anymore. "Too expensive," she explained.
Not everyone in the E-Mart was happy not to be able to buy U.S. beef.
"This whole issue is not about food killing you," said Young Sook, 51, a housewife who said she studied microbiology in college. "It's about politics. It's about people who are angry at President Lee for arbitrarily deciding to lift the beef ban without consulting the public."
She said she ate U.S. beef before the ban and would eat it again -- if it ever returns.
"I have lived in the States," she said. "I don't think the American government is stupid enough to sell food that will kill you."
Finding Korean beef to be overpriced, she bought chicken.
"I have never stopped buying chicken, bird flu or not," she said. "It is safe if you cook it."
Special correspondent Stella Kim contributed to this report.
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