As of July 1, Japanese government will ban restaurants from serving raw beef liver officially. If restaurants break the law, they will be fine or responsible peoples will go to jail. According to the announcement, the motivation of having to do this is that raw beef has bacterias no matter how fresh it is, and such bacterias can cause not only heavy stomachache but also health problems, and it is difficult to eliminate or kill bacteria completely before serving it. Actually children and old peoples can die due to these bacterias. However, wait a second ! The fact is not turned out recently, but the fact has been well known for long time from experiences. Japanese peoples eat raw beef liver while realizing this fact, and eating raw meet is up to peoples. Peoples understand, what is called, self-responsibility. Japanese Health ministry has warned that it is better not to eat raw meet, but it has not been prohibited by law. So this underlies in gray zone.
So why does the government do this now ?
I have one clue about this. Although some peoples die throughout one year, there was mass food poisoning due to raw beef in a restaurant in Japan. In this incident, some old peoples died and some children suffered from health problems. Moreover, many TV news took this incident seriously, and many peoples realized how risky eating raw meet is. This was because hygiene management in the restaurant was terrible. Raw beef was not fresh and they did not trim the surface of beef which is commonly done to eliminate bacteria as much as possible. So I guess that the health ministry keeps eyes close so far but they can not do that now. I am really sorry about restaurants which care about freshness of meet and properly do this process. Because of bad restaurants, good restaurants are damaged somehow.
What is happening in Japan is that many peoples rush into restaurants to enjoy last chance of raw beef liver and remember how tasty it is. If I were in Japan now, I would do same thing because I like it. However, please do not get wrong idea about Japanese people, not every people eats raw meet. I am sure that beer lovers tend to like to eat it because beer and raw beef liver is perfect match combination.
When I was in Japan, I used to eat some raw parts of chicken, beef, pork, fish, horse, deer.
But since I came to U.S, I have never tried those except raw fish because peoples do not have a habit of eating something without heating.
To tell the truth, I have suffered from food poisoning of chicken due to raw chicken, although I do not remember what part of chicken it was. At this time, I was suffering from fever, stomachache, and diarrhea for a few days. But I would not give up to eat those when I go back to Japan.
Link
http://jp.wsj.com/japanrealtime/blog/archives/11841/
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