BSE problem

¡¦It is often said that the import ban on beef from United States will be lifted soon. The

stock price of Yoshinoya or other fast food companies is highly ¡¡eval¡¡uated recently, thought

there are big differences between Japanese standards and U.S. meat standards. Why did

the Japanese government relax its tough policy?

= Statistics explanation =
¡¦Some U.S. politician said ¡ÈIt is wasteful to inspect all cattle. Statistically speaking,

only one percent will do¡É. It seems plausible, but this statement is more difficult than you

think, so it is necessary to explain it in detail.

I¡Çd like you to think about the case of the salt water: 90g water and 10g salt. If the

salt dissolves in the water completely, its density is 10%. If you took 10g of the water,

it must contain 1g salt as a result, so the density is same. This theory is applied to public

opinion poll. Mass media assume that as people are distributed almost equally around Japan,

only 2,000 samples(0.002%) will represent all Japanese opinion like the salt water. If

infected animals were distributed equally, its percentage is only 0.1%, only 20 cows would

represent the percentage of total infection.

= Comprehensive or selective? =
¡¦I don¡Çt think it is a matter of a comprehensive inspection or a selective inspection.

According to statistics, if there were no BSE cow in the sample, it would show that there

was no BSE cow in total.

However, a negative result of the sample doesn¡Çt mean that there is no BSE cow. You

wouldn¡Çt care whether the public opinion is correct or not, but if there were only one BSE

cow, it is fatal. Americans don¡Çt seem to care about the safety of foods, because they are

not interested in it, but unaware of statistical information. The attitude of U.S.

politicians shows that they don¡Çt care about the health of people, so they can justify

their actions by such ridiculous logic.

= The Cozy relationship =
¡¦It seems remarkable that Tokyo adopted a strict standard and refused to import U.S. beef.

However, Japanese politicians too didn¡Çt care about public opinion, but were just

politically motivated. Pork-barrel politicians who rely on agricultural unions strongly

exploited this opportunity to increase profit to farmers who were suffering because of

pressure from cheap imported beef. It is unfair for the U.S. to criticize the Japanese

stance, but equally Japan can¡Çt justify itself with the far-fetched reason that the U.S.

doesn¡Çt try to meet its standards which are exceedingly strict compared to other nations.

What is worst is the fact that farmers don¡Çt try hard to meet the strict standard in both

countries. Each country needs to persuade its farmers to accept them first.

= The malady of capitalism =
Generally speaking, sub-standard products can¡Çt be sold in the capitalist world, so some

would be motivated to hide bad information from customers. It is said that Japanese beef is

safe after policies to counter BSE were made, but many specialists warned that there could

be a lot of secret BSE cows. The stricter customers are to products, the more severe it is to

producers. Farmers who can¡Çt meet customers¡Ç demands should withdraw from the market.