There’s a few reasons why Koreans have beef with American beef. One is that Koreans view American beef to have a higher risk of mad cow disease. Even though there hasn’t been that many cases of the disease in the United States, some of the beef that the United States exports are from cattle over 30 months old, an age deemed to have a higher risk of having mad cow disease.

The other reason is Big Korean Beef who wants to minimize the competition for the sake of their bottom line-and hey it’s in their interests. But if both Korean suppliers and Korean consumers are pissed, why is their government forcing the issue and hell, willing to resign over it? Because the US government has told Korean officials that the free trade agreement they worked out will not pass through Congress unless we could sell them our beef. And since the Koreans have lots of cars to sell us, it’s really in their interests to buy our beef.

But it isn’t just Koreans who have beef with our beef. American beef has been banned in Europe for more than a decade. The reason is the use of unsafe hormones in American beef and a correlation between those hormones and higher risks of cancer.

Of course, if we didn’t pump unnatural hormones into our cattle, how on Earth could we get a $9.99 T-Bone steak special at the Sizzler? And if we couldn’t get that special at the Sizzler, well, that would just be un-American damnit!

photo credit: flickr creative commons

Post from: Sirened