Fatty foods could make us mentally ill; May increase depression

the article is gone from the site...there might be something to
this...japan won't get near U.S. beef...why is it ok for us?

nkd_one wrote:

japan won't get near U.S. beef...why is it ok for us?

The question is why they won't go near US beef and if their
claims are actually true.

Japan has a long history of unfair trade practices with other
nations. They protect their own industries and support
Japanese exports any way they can. The US has a long
history of mostly trending towards open trade practices
with rare forrays into protectionism and tit-for-tat fair trade
tactics.

So does Japan block US beef to protect their own small
internal cattle industry, or to influence the diet their
citizens eat, or to get trade money out of the US without
paying trade money to the US? On that front their
statements about why they block their imports takes very
little care for truth.

So the way to tell is to look at foreign trade with other
nations that have a long history of open trade policies and
not trying to protect their own internal industries. Find
such a nation, see if they block US beef, ask them why,
and they will have less incentive to lie.

A worry about the hormones and such given to cattle, but
the reason I worry about that has nothing at all to do with
what the Japanese trade negotiators say about the topic.

i think it's more about them protecting their people from the human
form of mad cow...i don't think our meat is safe as long as they grind
up dead animals for feed...they stopped feeding dead cows to cows and
this is good but not enough...cows should eat grass...on the news now
is you can't eat deer because the deer now have some form of mad cow

Mad cow protein found in deer meat
http://cooltech.iafrica.com/science/868365.htm

Context was Japanese block import of US beef. I cited the long
history of protectionism as a reason that what they claim is
often not their actual reason for blocking an import.

nkd_one wrote:

i think it's more about them protecting their people from the human
form of mad cow...

If Japan never blocked US beef before the appearance of even
one positive test in US cattle, that would be a valid reason.
The problem is Japan has gone in cycles blocking and not
blocking US beef imports across the decades. Each time
some reason has been cited and it has been used as a
political football to get other Japanese products into the US.

i don't think our meat is safe as long as they grind
up dead animals for feed...they stopped feeding dead cows to cows and
this is good but not enough...cows should eat grass...on the news now
is you can't eat deer because the deer now have some form of mad cow

The likely source was scrappy from sheep. Safe has always
been a relative term.

http://newsfromrussia.com/world/2006/01/30/72056.html
from the article:
"The Koizumi cabinet, which has continued to lay the blame solely on
the U.S., must also bear a grave responsibility in this matter," he
said. Nakagawa's admission of inspection lapses followed comments over
the weekend by the head of Japan's beef safety panel, who said Tokyo
should only import U.S. beef from slaughterhouses inspected by the
Japanese government.

According to Kyodo News agency, Yasuhiro Yoshikawa also recommended
separate processing lines for beef destined for the Japanese market due
to different rules in the U.S. and Japan regarding what cattle parts
are acceptable.
.................................................. .................................................. ............

if the beef meet their standards there would be no problem...our beef
industry needs to upgrade if they want to sell outside the U.S.

on second thought...i also agree japan has no intention of buying U.S.
beef and is looking for a reason to refuse any shipments

Doug Freyburger wrote:
If Japan never blocked US beef before the appearance of even
one positive test in US cattle, that would be a valid reason.
The problem is Japan has gone in cycles blocking and not
blocking US beef imports across the decades. Each time
some reason has been cited and it has been used as a
political football to get other Japanese products into the US.

We're part of the problem too, though.

I don't have a link, but read a story a while back - a cattle farmer
invested in the facilities to test *every* animal he raised for mad cow
and got approval from Japan to export his beef there. And the USDA
forbade him to do it, so he lost his investment in the testing
facilities.

We don't test the vast majority of animals here in the US... and we
don't *allow* even voluntary testing, for fear it would make the
non-tested beef look bad.