smokehard

In What’s the real beef?, a previous post, commenter Max Watson said:

the protesters haven’t any faith in their fellow Koreans. They think that restaurants and middlemen will market the US beef as Australian or domestic. The students worry because the schools will buy the cheapest beef (U.S.) and serve it; it’ll also be the most delicious beef they’ve had.

Seems to be the case already, and US beef hasn’t entered Korea in quite some time. Seems that a location of Home Ever has been selling residual US beef as Australian beef. The cheap beef hasn’t even flooded the market yet and Korean businesses are already fucking with labels!! Unbelievable!!

Two officials from the National Agricultural Products Quality Management Service stormed into the Guwol branch of hypermarket chain Homever in Incheon on Sunday, acting on a tip that the retailer was selling U.S. beef marked as something else. The label of seasoned beef products on display at the store read “Australian”, but pressed by the inspectors, clerks admitted that it was in fact American. (Chosun-Ilbo)

And what was the sellers excuse? Apparently the meat was about to “expire” and because no one was buying US beef, it was “inevitable” that the country of origin would be altered.

A sales clerk reportedly said that what they did was “inevitable” as U.S. beef had not been selling at all since May and the expiry date was fast approaching. (Chosun-Ilbo)

How about just throwing it out, donating it to a kennel or animal shelter? Chalk it up as some sort of socially responsible act. Nah, that doesn’t make a profit. Well nor does being caught lying. How many customers did Homever just lose? I wonder.

The article then says:

Amid the high public aversion to U.S. beef, the farm products service earlier this month conducted a clampdown on meat selling regulations. For two weeks, 1,300 officials inspected 1,819 meat shops, 4.5 percent of the total 40,000 nationwide. Fifteen sellers including Homever had falsified their meat’s country of origin and ten did not label origin at all. (Chosun-Ilbo)

While the number of people caught seems quite low, I’m pretty sure it would be a crap load higher if people  hadn’t been holding up candles everyday for the past 40 days. Now, in all fairness, I really have no idea where most all of the beef came from when I ate it in Canada. I just didn’t care. But I am pretty sure companies didn’t fabricate country of origin simply because they didn’t feel like they had to. I have no idea though. But anyway, I can understand why Koreans are nervous about a 100% opening of the US beef market, though I just wish the protesters would voice what they are willing to accept instead of simply calling for a “renegotiation”.

If the various civic groups have actually published what they are willing to accept in order for US beef to hit the shelves in Korea, please let me know. I would be interested in seeing what would make these now-boring protests stop.