"This is nothing less than a colossal blunder by our ministry. It was beyond our expectations that straw would become a source of radioactive contamination," a ministry official said.
A total of 143 beef cattle suspected of being contaminated with radioactive cesium after ingesting straw that was stored outdoors have been shipped from Fukushima Prefecture and distributed to wholesalers, retailers and consumers in various prefectures.
Livestock farmers and others in the meat industry have attacked the government for its failure to prevent the problem.
On March 19, about one week after the outbreak of the crisis at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the agriculture ministry issued written instructions regarding livestock feed to farmers via local governments. The documents stipulated that any grass fed to livestock should have been reaped before the accidents at the plant, and stored indoors since the accident.
However, the instructions made no reference to rice straw.
In late April, the ministry set new regulations on livestock feed, stipulating that all feed must contain less than 300 becquerels of radioactive material per kilogram. However, the ministry failed to communicate this order to rice farmers who sell straw to livestock farmers.
Rice straw, which contains very little vitamin A, is unsuitable as a principle nutrition source for livestock. However, feeding it to beef cattle promotes the development of marbled fat, which is favored by many consumers. For this reason, many livestock farmers feed rice straw to cattle for several months prior to the animals being shipped to market.
Rice straw is generally reaped in autumn and then stored in warehouses, to protect it from the winter elements. "So we thought rice straw wouldn't have been affected by radioactive substances [leaked from the plant]," a senior agriculture ministry official said.
However, a man who works in the livestock industry in Fukushima Prefecture said it is "common knowledge" that in areas with little snowfall, some farmers leave straw in the open air in winter to dry.
"If grass is contaminated with radioactive substances, so is straw. Is that so difficult to figure out?" said a 33-year-old owner of a butcher shop in Hakusan, Ishikawa Prefecture.
The butcher used to sell top-grade beef from the Tohoku region at his shop, but since the nuclear accident sells only beef produced in western Japan.
"Until the government takes more effective action against this problem, I'll be scared to sell [Tohoku] beef at my shop," he said.
On April 18, the agriculture ministry ordered livestock farmers near the Fukushima No. 1 plant to have their cattle checked for radioactivity before shipment.
Experts soon voiced concerns about the value of the inspections, pointing out that while they may prevent workers at meat-processing plants from being exposed to radioactive substances, they do not measure the amount of radioactive substances absorbed internally by the cattle.
The checks involved electronically measuring the amount of radioactive material on the surface of the animals' bodies. Shipment is allowed if the detected radioactive emissions are below 100,000 counts per minute. The same amount of radioactive material on a human would require that person to undergo full-body decontamination.
So far, about 12,000 cattle have been subjected to the checks, and all have passed, the agriculture ministry said.
The ministry has asked livestock farmers to report the details of feed and water given to their cattle. But it is known that at least one farmer, who is based in Minami-Soma and shipped cattle contaminated with radioactive substances in excess of the provisional limit, gave an inaccurate report, the ministry said.
The contamination of beef from that farmer's cattle was discovered July 8.
The senior agricultural ministry official said: "We've sought to secure the safety of beef by managing the processes by which livestock farmers raise their animals. However, from the standpoint of protecting consumers, maybe we should have directly checked the safety of the meat."
Some Fukushima prefectural government officials said all cattle from the prefecture should be checked for internal radioactivity. The officials noted that mandatory checks for bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, were introduced for all cattle after the disease was detected in Japan in 2001.
However, checking 90 brain tissue samples for mad cow disease takes only about three hours, whereas testing a single animal for internal radioactivity takes about an hour.
Also, germanium semiconductor devices used to conduct radioactivity checks cost 20 million yen each.
The local governments will inspect the safety of all beef and beef cattle if the central government orders them to do so, but they are already busy monitoring the safety of other food products.
The central government plans to restrict shipments of cattle raised in Fukushima Prefecture soon. However, it is estimated that several thousand beef cattle have already been shipped from the prefecture since the nuclear crisis began. Tracking and testing all the meat from those animals would be a difficult task.
"First of all, we need to restrict the shipment of beef, and then reorganize the framework for inspections," an official of the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry said.
"It would be difficult to inspect all the beef that's already been shipped. The priority is to find out which cattle might have been contaminated by eating rice straw. We do that by inspecting straw and cattle," the official said.
