#Radioactive Beef Consumed in School Lunches in 296 Schools in 12 Prefectures in Japan

and 43% of the schools are located in Yokohama City alone.



From Asahi Shinbun (3:02AM JST 8/11/2011):

放射性セシウムに汚染された疑いのある牛肉を給食に使っていた学校や幼稚園が１２都県の２９６施設に上ることが、文部科学省の調 査で分かった。うち２校では国の暫定基準値を超えるセシウムを検出。健康に影響はないとみられるが、文科省は食材の出荷制限などの情報に注意するよう学校 現場に呼びかけている。



The survey by the Ministry of Education and Science has revealed that 296 schools in 12 prefectures have used beef from cows suspected of radioactive cesium contamination. 2 schools used the beef whose cesium level exceeded the provisional safety limit. It is not considered the level of cesium in the meat will affect health, but the ministry is telling the schools to pay attention to information on shipping restriction on food items [due to radiation].



　文科省によると、９日現在で、汚染され た稲わらを食べた可能性のある牛の肉は、東北から中国、四国にかけての２０市町の小中高・特別支援学校２７８校と幼稚園１８園の給食で、カレーや牛丼、肉 じゃがなどに使われていたことが判明。横浜市で１２７校、岐阜市で５３校・園、宮城県の４市町では３０校・園に上る。東日本が主だが、三重、島根、香川の 計４市４０校・園でも使われていた。



According to the ministry, as of August 9, the meat from the cows that may have eaten radioactive rice hay was used in school lunches in 278 elementary schools, junior high schools, high schools, and special education schools, and 18 kindergartens, in 20 cities and towns in Japan. 127 schools in Yokohama City used it, so did 53 schools and kindergartens in Gifu City [in Gifu Prefecture], and 30 schools and kindergartens in 4 cities in Miyagi Prefecture. The schools are mostly located in eastern Japan, but 40 schools in 4 cities in Mie, Shimane, Kagawa Prefectures also used the meat.



　在庫の肉を検査できた約３０施設のうち、放射性物質が 検出されたのは８施設。うち宮城県の特別支援学校と千葉県の小学校の計２校では、国の暫定基準値（１キロあたり５００ベクレル）を超える１２９３～６４９ ベクレルが検出された。ただしいずれの自治体も、１人あたりの肉の使用量は少なく、健康への影響はないとしている。



30 schools were able to test the remaining meat, and radioactive materials were detected at 8 schools. Of the 8 schools, two schools - a special education school for students with disabilities in Miyagi Prefecture and an elementary school in Chiba, had the meat that exceeded the provisional safety limit (500 becquerels/kg of radioactive cesium), testing 1,293 to 649 becquerels/kg. The municipalities say the amount of contaminated beef per person is small, and it won't affect the health.

In the meantime, the Food Safety Commission under the Cabinet Office is soliciting public comments (in Japanese alone please, says the Commission) on their detailed justification for their decision to set 100 millisieverts for life-time allowable radiation exposure for the Japanese. If you read their conclusion, you would think there would be no problem with any of the nuclides that have been released from the broken nuclear power plant in Fukushima. (More later.)

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(UPDATED) Yokohama City Finally Admits It May Have Been Feeding School Children with Radioactive Beef

Yokohama City officials, from the ex-Daiei CEO mayor on down, denied and refused to do anything about it since one of the city's assemblymen first raised the issue back in April of school lunches in the city using beef from cows that were possibly contaminated with radioactive materials. The officials asserted that any food items were "safe as long as they are sold in the marketplace". (See my post here for the assemblyman's effort with concerned citizens of Yokohama to force the city to stop the use of beef in school lunches.)

Now, the city's Board of Education finally admits that the city may have fed as many as 67,000 kids in elementary schools in the city with radioactive beef.

From Yomiuri Shinbun (10:11PM JST 8/5/2011):

横浜市は５日、放射性セシウムに汚染された稲わらを食べた疑いのある福島、宮城、岩手県産の牛１９頭の肉が、市内の小学校１２７校（約６万７０００人分）の給食に使われた可能性があると発表した。

Yokohama City announced on August 5 that the meat from 19 cows in Fukushima, Miyagi, and Iwate that may have been fed with rice hay contaminated with radioactive cesium may have been used in school lunches at the city's 127 elementary schools (for about 67,000 pupils).

　市教委健康教育課によると、１９頭の肉は４月１９日～６月２１日に計１２回、ハッシュドビーフやドライカレーなどの材料として使われた。放射性物質の検査は行われていない。すでにすべてが消費された可能性があるが、同課は「追跡調査できるかわからない」としている。

According to the Health and Education section of the city's Board of Education, the meat from 19 cows were used 12 times between April 19 and June 21 as the ingredient for school lunches. The testing for radioactive materials in the meat was never done, and the meat has probably been all consumed. The Health and Education section of the Board of Education says "We don't know if we can trace the meat at all."

　１食あたりの使用量は２５～４０グラム程度で、同課は「食べた量が少ないので、健康に影響を及ぼすとは考えられない」としている。

25 to 40 grams of the meat was used per serving. The Board of Education says "Since it was a small amount, it's hard to believe it would affect the health."

Here we go again. Citizens of Yokohama, take down the names of the people who said this.

So, the concerned citizens in Yokohama was raising the issue since April, and the they were dead right. They raised the issue with the city, and the city refused to do anything. Why? They could have tested the meat in April, and could have stopped using it. Instead, they did nothing, forced kids to eat school lunches (many parents were upset with school principals refusing to allow home-made lunch). Too afraid to find out? Too cheap to test?

It was only July 11 that Yokohama City finally stopped using the beef for lunch, several days before the summer break. They switched to pork, as if pork were safe. (More than 10,000 pigs have been moved from Fukushima and scattered throughout Japan since April, and there is no way to trace the movement as there is no unique identification system for pigs.)

Needless to say, it is not just elementary schools. That's what the city officials have admitted to. School lunches for kindergartens and nursery schools, and for junior high schools, are also prepared in the city's facilities and distributed to these schools.

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UPDATE: Checking the Yokohama assemblyman's message board, it's just unreal what's going on there. And by no means Yokohama is unique in this. Some of what's happening:

• The city is still intent on sending the school kids to the summer school in Nikko, in Tochigi Prefecture, where the radiation is high;

• Many schools don't allow children to carry water bottles to schools, and say they have to drink tap water;

• Many schools still don't allow home-made lunches, and one school demands the parents that they make exactly the same lunch as the school lunch if they insist on home-made lunch for their children. Some schools collect monthly lunch fees from the parents even if their children carry home-made lunches;

• Schools are planning to have children do the yard cleanup after the summer break.

Parents, pull your children out of schools. Any school.

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UPDATE-2

The announcement from the city's Board of Education is here (in Japanese). It details which school ate what on which date from which cow (with ID number). If you are a parent in Yokohama and read Japanese, go to the link above and check what your child may have been fed.

The Board of Education can't help these misleading statements though:

現在までのところ、暫定規制値を超える放射性物質が検出されたとする報告はありません。

So far, there has been no report of detection of the radioactive materials exceeding the provisional safety limit.

Of course there isn't, because all the meat has been consumed and there's nothing left to test.

And obligatory reference to "Oh the radiation level from the beef is the same as one chest X-ray so it's no big deal."

It's really scary that these people are "educators". We know better, don't we, thanks in part to people like Professor Kodama (I've started the summary of his interview on August 5), who tells us that the number is irrelevant when assessing the risk of radiation; it's where the radionuclides go in the body and what specific effect they have at particular locations.

(H/T to "Nguyen_ducThuan", a reader of my Japanese blog and a concerned resident in Yokohama City, for the link to the Board of Education.)

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Beef from Fukushima to Be Tested (Somehow) in Fukushima from Now On, But It's Too Late For School Kids in Yokohama

Children from nursery schools and kindergartens up to junior high schools in Yokohama City had already been fed the beef from Fukushima since late April. Then the news of radioactive beef from Minami-Soma City broke a few days ago.

The news, which had been dismissed by many as "baseless rumor" and some sort of "urban legend" in Yokohama and elsewhere, has finally been reported on Mainichi Shinbun Japanese more or less (less) on July 12.

An anonymous reader of my Japanese blog, who turned out be a councilman (no party affiliation) of the Yokohama City Council, commented on my blog entry on July 9 that discussed the contaminated beef and radiation exposure of children.

[Correction: The anonymous reader was not the councilman himself but a concerned citizen in Yokohama City. 1:29AM 7/13/2011]

He said in the comment:

Regarding your post, I'd like to alert you to the fact that a large quantity of beef from Fukushima Prefecture has been used in school lunches in Yokohama City, without citizens and parents informed. We are living everyday trying to protect our lives, and with bitterness and regret at our powerlessness. Please spread the news.

He sent me the link to the simple message board the councilman, Mr. Masataka Ota, keeps for his constituents. So I went, and the following is my rough summary of posts and happenings since May, as posted by the councilman and concerned residents of Yokohama. It may change the impression you may have about Yokohama City; it has changed mine:

======================

In mid May, Yokohama announced it would measure radiation in food items that go to school lunches, but the only food items tested would be those grown in Yokohama [i.e. none or close to none]. For vegetables and meat from Fukushima Prefecture, the city considered "safe" because they were tested in Fukushima Prefecture.

In late May, the councilman and many of the people who commented on the board were afraid that the city was using radioactive food stuff for school lunches. But there were many posts from people who said "Oh come on, it's just a rumor, and without a solid data from the government officials we shouldn't speculate. You're all over-reacting." There was even a post from a teacher (as revealed by the IP address, apparently using a school computer) who trashed people who were worried about the food safety for children, with a vulgar, yakuza-like language.

There were messages from parents who had their children carry their own lunches and water bottles to schools and kindergartens, and the schools denied their children to consume those homemade lunches and water.

The mayor of Yokohama and the Board of Education president answered the councilman in a meeting that they considered the food items used for school lunches "are safe, because they are sold in the market", and that they had instructed the school principals to answer the parents that way when they asked about the safety of school lunches.

Then, in early June, the City of Yokohama relented to mounting complaints from the parents and people like this councilman, announced that it would conduct sample testing of the food items for school lunches. At the same time, though, it announced that it would use food items from the disaster-affected areas (i.e. Fukushima) to show support.

Some parents went to ask their school principals and teachers. "Why aren't you doing something to find out if the food is safe?" Their answer? "Well, everyone's eating it."

In the meantime, schools started to prepare for swimming classes in their swimming pools, and not to waste pool water that had been in the pools, they used it to water the school gardens and yards, to the horror of parents who were called "monster parents" for worrying "too much" about radiation.

Then a bombshell.

On June 5, an insider leak to the coucilman from a concerned food stuff dealer. The dealer provided the unique identification numbers for the cows whose meat was used in Yokohama's school lunches.

They were all from Fukushima.

Why would Yokohama City use Fukushima beef for children? Because it was cheap. Because consumers didn't want to buy Fukushima beef if they see it on the supermarket shelves, the price of Fukushima beef had plummeted by 40 to 50 percent. No one wanted it, price went down, a cost conscious city and schools and kindergartens and nursery schools bought it to feed small children, without telling them or their parents the meat was from Fukushima.

The city continued to do absolutely nothing. In mid June, the councilman got another piece of information: prior to the Fukushima I Nuclear Plant accident, there was NO USE of Fukushima beef in school lunches in Yokohama. After the accident, the price of Fukushima beef plummetted. Meat dealers got the cheap meat, sold it to the city, pocketed the very fat margin. Schools, both private and public it looks like, fed small children with the potentially contaminated beef, with the tacit approval of the mayor and the Board of Education.

Aside from the radioactive school lunches, the city also planned to send city's children to a summer school in Ibaraki Prefecture, where the air radiation was more than 10 times the "official" Yokohama number (measured on the top of a 5-story building). The personnel at the summer school privately told the councilman, "I wouldn't recommend it..."

The councilman and concerned parents continued to push for radiation survey of food items for school lunches, but the only items tested by the city were those grown anywhere but Fukushima.

Then, in late June, the councilman reported the result of the meeting at the Board of Education. All the beef from Fukushima that went to school lunches in Yokohama from April 23 to June 7 came from the planned evacuation zone in Fukushima. There were 916 cows from the zone. None of them exceeded 5,000 cpm in surface radiation, but none was tested zero. All were contaminated. The information was obtained by tracing the unique identification numbers for the cows.

On July 9 in Japan, the news broke that the meat from a meat cow from Minami Soma City was found with radioactive cesium of 2300 becquerels/kg, almost 5 times the provisional safety limit (500 becquerels/kilogram).

The councilman's post on July 9:

All Fukushima-grown beef that was served in school lunches in Yokohama City was contaminated. The contamination that was checked at the time of shipment from Fukushima Prefecture was only the surface radiation of a live cow, and there was no information as to the contamination after the cow was processed into meat. School children have already ingested this meat.

There was a leak from some school nutritionists of this fact. But the city, the city's Board of Education and the school principals "lied" by saying "food items for school lunches are safe, because they are sold in the market." As the result, elementary school children in Yokohama City have been internally irradiated.

Finally on July 11, Yokohama City decided to stop using beef in school lunches.

Caveat? They will stop for the month of July, and they will use pork instead, as if pork is safe. The last lunch will be on July 15, then it's summer break.

The city's Labor Union (which includes city workers who prepare school lunches) has issued a statement protesting ... (don't hold your breath) ... the city's decision to stop using beef, as it "will spread the baseless rumor".

One or two detractors on the councilman's board who have been the apologists for the government seem to have disappeared after the news of 78,000 becquerels/kilogram cesium in the hay fed to the cows.

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My superficial image of Yokohama as upscale, cosmopolitan city on the Tokyo Bay waterfront was just that: superficial.

The councilman's own website is here (Japanese only).

The Mayor of Yokohama is a 65-year-old woman who was the CEO of Daiei, with many top positions mostly in auto industry before and after, with only her high school diploma. Quite an achievement. Too bad she has been totally tone-deaf on things that doesn't make money, like testing for radiation for the sake of children.

Parents of Yokohama City, please do consider home schooling. Don't even bother sending your children to schools that clearly care more about their bottom lines than children.

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