hankyoreh

The government yesterday dispatched an investigation team made up of both government and private individuals to the United States, five days after the a case mad cow disease (BSE) was discovered. Following intense demands from ruling and opposition political parties and civil society to cease quarantine inspections until an epidemiological study was complete, the impression that the government has been forced into taking this measure is a strong one. Before dispatching the team, the government had already decided not to stop quarantine inspections, having judged, based on explanations from the US government, that there was no threat to Korean public health.
We no longer even want to recall the promise made, at the time of the candlelit beef protests in 2008, by President Lee Myung-bak, the prime minister and the heads of the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MIFAFF) and the trade negotiation team to immediately cease imports if BSE was discovered. Seeing the brazenness with which these officials so easily deny the promises they made on live TV broadcasts, in parliamentary question sessions and in written documents merely serve to reconfirm that this is a government that cannot be trusted.
Still, it does not seem that this investigation team will even conduct a proper investigation. The nine individuals on the team are without exception pro-government figures. Eight of them, with the exception of the head of a consumer group, come from the Animal, Plant and Fisheries Quarantine and Inspection Agency, which is affiliated with MIFAFF. Seoul National University professor Yoo Han-sang, the team’s academic representative, served for 11 years as a quarantine inspector at the Quarantine Inspection Agency, while Korean Veterinary Medical Association president Kim Ok-gyeong, the group member representing related organizations, is said to have served as a bureau chief in the MIFAFF at the same time as Suh Kyu-yong, who now heads the ministry. Given that the head of the consumer association serves as an advisory member of MIFAFF and is said to a friend of Suh, the result of the team’s investigation is obvious before it has even begun.
The composition of this investigation team is different from that sent to Canada in 2010 in advance of the resumption of imports of Canadian beef to Korea, which included three academics and experts critical of the government.
The team‘s activity once it arrives in the US will be very limited. Not only is it unable to visit the most important place: the farm where the BSE case broke out; it is also reportedly unable to independently assess or take necessary measures at the workplaces and slaughterhouses it visits. It is natural that suspicions are being raised that, unlike Japan, which obtained a clear statement of the right to conduct substantial site inspections during beef negotiations, the Korean team will listen only to what the US government says and return to Korea after being given a government-guided tour.
This is why the dispatching of the investigation team can only be regarded as posturing by the administration, following shoddy quarantine reinforcements. Attempting to dodge the pressure of public opinion by feigning investigations in the full knowledge of their impotence is an act that could only be pulled off by those with contempt for the public they are meant to serve. 　
　
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