What is it with those kooky South Koreans? Tens of thousands of them have rushed into the streets to protest — get this — beef. Specifically, beef imported from the United States. Are they nuts? Or, do they know something we don't?

South Koreans are rejecting our steaks and burgers because of widespread belief there that America's industrialized production process brings a deadly dose of mad-cow disease to the plate. Once the third largest importer of U.S. beef, South Korea shut its ports to our product after the brain-wasting livestock disease was confirmed in America in 2003. This April, however, President Lee Myung-bak gave in to industry pressure and issued an edict that lifted his country's ban.

Bad move. Consumers, furious that he would sell out their nation's health to global trade hucksters, exploded all over Lee, who became the first Korean president brought to his knees by steak. He was forced to apologize for his mishandling of the issue, he fired all but one of his top aides, the entire cabinet submitted their resignations, and he hastily renegotiated a watered-down deal with American officials.

Still, the protests continue, with insistent demands for Lee's political hide, and he is now resorting to a heavy-handed police crackdown on them. Despite allowing a small amount of U.S. beef into the country, major supermarkets and restaurants refuse to sell it, and even McDonald's stresses in its ads that its Korean franchises make their burgers with Australian beef. Also, when Condoleezza Rice took a June diplomatic visit to Seoul, she was greeted with protest placards demanding, "Stop Rice and Mad Cow."

The official American response is to depict South Koreans as silly consumers, scared of a bugaboo in their burgers. But, is it a bugaboo?

The ones being silly are our own ag officials and corporate beef purveyors. They could easily assure our Korean customers that the beef we ship to them is free of mad cow disease by conducting a test on each cow as it goes to slaughter. Called rapid test, this cheap, simple, reliable screening can detect the disease even in animals that do not yet show any "mad" symptoms, giving slaughterhouses the ability to prevent all tainted cows from entering the food supply.

Japan already does this, and all European countries use the rapid test extensively, thus assuring their foreign customers that their beef contains no detectable levels of the disease.

The Bush agriculture department, however, refuses to implement such a system or even to let private companies use the rapid test on their own as a way of meeting their customers' demand for mad-free meat. Instead, the department and the giant meat exporters it serves arrogantly insist that the world must simply trust that every ounce of America's beef is pure because we say it is.

"I want to assure everyone that American beef is safe," Rice announced in Seoul, as though her word should be enough. "Eat it, and shut up" seems to be America's marketing slogan.

Meanwhile, back at the home place, a Consumers Union survey found that 71 percent of American beefeaters are willing to pay up to a dime more per pound to cover the cost of mad-cow testing on all of our domestic beef supply. So, why is the U.S. Department of Agriculture so boneheaded?

One reason is that testing most likely would reveal that the American industry has a much larger mad cow problem than it's been willing to admit. In Europe, for example, a pilot testing program turned up not a few cases, but 1,117 cows that carried the disease, even though they showed no symptoms and had been cleared to enter the food supply.

It's not Korean consumers who are crazy — it's our own public officials. For more information, contact Consumers Union: www.consumersunion.org.

To find out more about Jim Hightower, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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