SPEAKING
FREELY North Koreans given cause to
beef By Robert Neff
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
In a country
infamous for famines, it is no wonder that cattle
in North Korea are prized so highly and considered
"national property". According to government
sources, North Korea had about 575,000 head of
cattle in 2002, but considering the recent
floods and food shortages
this number may have dropped. In addition to the
floods and food shortages, North Koreans must
contend with the bovine diseases that cause health
concerns not only to the cattle, but also for the
people.
The most serious incident took place last summer. It began in
the North Korean region of Yanggang. A horrible
and mysterious disease that the frightened residents
called "leprosy" for the impact on victims, causing
them to break out in boils and oozing skin that
progressed to the point that, as one North Korean
defector described it, left its victims looking
"like pieces of sliced meat".
The story
was first reported by the North Korea Daily (July
27, 2006), which described the disease as an
epidemic, but no one knows just how many victims
it has claimed. One defector living in South Korea
told a newspaper reporter that he had spoken with
some members of his family still in North Korea
who informed him the "rotten flesh disease" was
spreading throughout the northern provinces.
Many North Korean residents believed that
the disease originated from contaminated beef
sold in the Jangmadang markets. Apparently there was
some truth to their suspicions. According to the
North Korea Daily, the sale of beef and the movement of
cattle in the region were banned or tightly
controlled.
What was the disease? Several
veterinarian experts contacted suggested that it
was anthrax, a naturally occurring disease among
cattle and other hoofed mammals. All agreed that
if a person ate the flesh of an anthrax-diseased
animal he had a high risk of dying.
But
not all of the experts agreed that it was anthrax.
Dr Martin Hugh-Jones of Louisiana State University
conceded that the "oozing skin sores" might well
be anthrax cutaneous lesions, but "while it is
tempting to suggest 'anthrax', I know of no
lesions involving peeling skin or people looking
like 'sliced meat'."
It is almost
inconceivable that people would willingly eat the
flesh of a possibly diseased animal, but it has
happened several times in North Korea. In fact,
many North Korean people believe that contaminated
meat can be eaten if it is boiled at 100 degrees
Celsius or higher.
Last January,
farmers in the Tuman River region began to lose
cattle to a disease they simply called the "cow
disease". The cattle all displayed the same
symptoms: hooves splitting, heavy drooling, and
sores in their mouths and on their tongues. Local
health officials were called in. They determined
that the disease had traveled across the Tuman
River from China.
In December 2005, China
reported several outbreaks of foot-and-mouth
disease in the interior provinces, but it was
suspected that the disease had also spread to
Heilongjang province, one of China's key cattle
raising areas located along the North Korean
border, and possibly into neighboring Russia.
Dr Peter Roeder of the Food and
Agriculture Organization of the United Nations
and Dr Hugh-Jones agree that the symptoms appear
to be indicative of foot-and-mouth disease. Roeder
stated, "I did not have information that it had
got into North Korea but I am not surprised."
At least one region was quarantined to
prevent the spread of the disease. Cattle that
displayed any of the symptoms were quickly killed
and buried in deep pits in a further effort to
prevent the spread of the disease. Despite the
North Korean officials' precautions to ensure that
the cattle carcasses were buried, it was soon
discovered that two of the infected cows were
missing. Someone had dug them up.
The
local officials warned the people that eating the
contaminated meat could kill children under the
age of five. Roeder insisted that foot-and-mouth
disease did not affect humans, and Hugh-Jones
supported him by adding, "Eating such a carcass
should not of itself be dangerous other than the
usual dangers from eating meat from sick and
moribund animals."
Did contaminated meat cause
the strange leprosy-like disease that allegedly
plagued Yanggang? Were diseased cattle carcasses
dug up from pits, butchered, sold and eaten
by hungry or greedy residents? Both doctors agreed
that North Korea is a black hole for disease
information and that in such countries nasty
diseases will be politically unattractive and
therefore official reports will be played down
and minimal.
Both doctors were again in agreement when
they observed that defectors and refugees have
a poor record of reliability in what they
say and write. Exaggeration is the commonest characteristic,
they said.
But not all
possibly contaminated meat originated in North
Korea.
In 2001, during the height of
the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (mad-cow
disease) scare in Europe, many countries
slaughtered hundreds of thousands of head of
cattle in an effort to check the disease.
Famine-stricken North Korea agreed to accept some
of the possibly contaminated beef from Germany and
Switzerland (see German meat may be North Korean
poison, Asia Times Online,
February 23, 2001).
As retired veterinarian Patricia Doyle
noted, "It is a very nasty stunt to pass on
infected cattle to any people, regardless of their
ideology. It is the government who may have
political differences not the people."
But
if a government would be desperate enough to feed
its citizens meat possibly contaminated with a
fatal disease, how far are starving people willing
to go to satisfy, if only for a short time, the
hunger in their bellies? Further, it seems, than
most of us would like to acknowledge.
Robert Neff is a former
columnist with the Korea Times. He is currently
doing research for several books dealing with
early Korean-Western relations from 1880-1910 and
also on the Western gold mines in Korea
(1882-1939). He has been based in Korea for about
20 years - first with the military and now as an
independent researcher.
(Copyright
2007 Robert Neff.)
Speaking Freely is
an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest
writers to have their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
