Dumped Milk From Thinning Cows Signaling Next Threat for Fukushima Farmers

[jpak]

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-03-22/dumped-milk-thinning-cows-signal-new-threat-to-farms-near-fukushima-plant.html

Kanju Kurosawa kept his 50 dairy cows alive by carting water from a neighboring town after local supplies were knocked out by the March 11 earthquake.

By the time taps flowed again on March 19, Kurosawa and his 80-year-old father had trucked 12,000 liters (3,100 gallons) for the herd -- less than half its requirement. Milk output is at half the pre-quake levels, he said, and what’s produced is considered unfit for human consumption because of the dairy’s proximity to the Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s stricken nuclear power plant, 52 kilometers (32 miles) away.

“We don’t know how dairy farmers in Fukushima will survive,” said Kurosawa, who estimates he’s losing 60,000 yen to 70,000 yen ($740-$865) a day on his farm in Iino, 235 kilometers north of Tokyo. “I want to stick it out, but I don’t know how long the radiation impact will last and whether the spring grass will be contaminated. I can’t continue if I have to buy all my feed.”

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Contaminated milk was linked to more than 6,000 cases of thyroid cancer in children and adolescents in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia in the two decades following the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine. Iodine-131 was the main contributor to radiation poisoning, the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation wrote in a 2008 report.

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[flamingdem]

1. I hope Tepco takes care of these farmers, their lives are ruined nt