Why no Opposition parties pick on silence of the Malaysian government over potential contamination of Japanese produce?
By Yong Ming Hui
This is no secret. I shall save you the boredom of reading about what is happening in Japan. If you have not heard of the nuclear crisis, where have you been?
The issue at stake now is tainted imports from Japan, and the need for transparency and efficiency in vetting their produce to ensure that Malaysians do not contaminate their food chain with radiation.
Food for human consumption, live stocks, can easily be tainted by radioactive particles and nobody seems to really know what the true levels are now.
Governments around the world have taken action to prevent their citizens from being exposed to excessive doses of radioactive iodine, cesium, and even plutonium, the most deadly particle known to man. USA has banned Japanese food imports. Singapore is vetting them carefully and managed to find contaminated items, and even published their action taken, transparently. Even China has turned away a ship that has only docked in Tokyo a few hours because it absorbed too much radiation from the air and sea when it reached China.
Malaysians should not be complacent and think that the radiation contamination is a localized issue in Japan. There is no way that Malaysia could escape even contamination of air, now that many countries including USA, Canada, Korea, China, even Phillipines have confirmed contamination not just in imported produce, but even wind carried over from Japan.
Malaysia is nearer to Japan than America, and even if we’re not exposed directly by the jet stream, we would eventually still receive them, even if not in the same time it takes for them to reach America and other countries. All winds travel around the world eventually.
They will reach our air space, and if you were to take my word for it, I could personally already feel the air fouling my throat, giving me a ‘pedih’ sensation, unlike the usual strep/viral infection I get. I am not alone in this, but it is easy for those in denial to label us as being dramatic or fear mongering even if we’re telling the truth about our own experience.
Ask any patient recovering from a radiotherapy treatment to their throat due to cancer and you get the idea how it feels like.
Now back to the topic, contaminated produce from Japan.
As we all know, there’s quite a lot of Japanese investors, who have stakes in Malaysia, and of course … they have partners too.
I would let my readers take a guess as to who these partners are in Malaysia, whom the Japanese are forced to partner with due to our 30 percent policy, lest I be accused of slander or incitement.
Do you seriously believe the local partners, who are ‘influential’, would actually allow any news that confirms the contamination of Japanese produce, to be revealed to the public?
Do Malaysians trust the government to inform them of the truth? A conflict of interest could be seen here.
Do they care more about their pockets, shares, or your health and welfare?
They’ve already answered this question through Lynas. (Hint Hint, read up if you haven’t already about the radioactive Lynas plant).
So my fellow Malaysians, it is now up to ourselves to do as much as we can about what we put into our mouths and lives, than relying on the government, or even the Opposition, to do anything to safeguard our health and welfare.
Their time seems to be currently spent on issues that only raging adolescent young men would be interested in such as the likes of Maria Ozawa, Yui Hatano, Sora Aoi, Tina Yuzuki and so on.
