What is in the Beef?

The latest and hottest political news in Taiwan is about the removal of much of the restrictions on importing American beef to the island. On October 22, Taiwan’s Department of Health (DOH) announced that Taiwan will amend its import restriction on U.S. beef and beef products, consistent with the guidelines of the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) for bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE, aka “Mad Cow Disease”), and allow more beef more products to enter Taiwan market starting Nov 10th. Further, there will be a transition period, as short as 6 months, during which U.S. exporters will export only beef and beef products derived from cattle less than 30 months in age. This is not a minor political issue. In spring 2008, South Korean’s new cabinet had to resign in less than 4 months of its installation due to a political crisis triggered by a similar policy change (that did get implemented on July 1^st, 2008).

BSE or “Mad Cow Disease” was first discovered in brains and spines of cattle in Great Britain back in 1986 with unknown origin and had been found in a few countries including U.S. It is a fatal neurodegenerative disease primarily in cattle. However, it is pretty certain that the disease can be transmitted to certain animals and people who had ingested products of infected cattle although the number of known cases is small. In the case of human, BSE is known as a new variant of Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) and there is no cure and death is almost certain, thus a series health concern by all.

Responding to the first BSE case reported in U.S. in Dec. 2003, most countries including Taiwan immediately banned the import of beef and beef products from U.S. The financial impact on American cattle and associated business was significant. Prior to it, the total export of U.S. beef and beef product was valued at about $3.8 billion in 2003. In 2004, after the ban, it dropped to $0.8 billion. With the improvement steps by U.S. cattle business and government regulations/monitors, many countries have relaxed the bans to varying degree. As a result, the export has climbed back close to the pre-BSE era at about $3.6 billion in 2008 according to the private USMEF (U.S. Meat Export Federation). In the case of Taiwan, it lifted the complete ban in Jan 2006 and has been allowing import of boneless muscle cuts from cattle 30 month of age or less. It continues to ban others till now including bone-in cuts and so called variety meat (processed or parts other than skeletal muscles) such as ground beef, intestines, brains, spines, etc.

Taiwan has been an important market to U.S. meat export business for a long time. In 2008, Taiwan was the fifth-largest value market for US beef export valued at $127.7 million, after Mexico ($1.4 billion), Canada($716 million), Japan($383 million), South Korea($294 million) according to USMEF. By the way, Taiwan only produces about 6,000 metric tons of beef annually and relies heavily on imports. It imported about 73 thousand metric tons of beef in 2008 out of which 22 thousand metric tons or 30% were from U.S., slightly behind Australia (~27 thousand metric tons) and ahead of New Zealand (~19 thousand metric tons).

It should not surprise anyone that this business and trade interest between U.S. and Taiwan had become a non-trivial political issue in Taiwan. At one end of the spectrum, fevered nationalism and the remnants of anti-imperialism resurfaced, fanned by some with other political agenda. Some scholars and health experts question the scientific and technical basis for policy change and the lack of transparency of the process. What is clear is that the communications have been so poor that top government officials could not give facts and stories clearly and consistently which naturally led to more speculations and suspicions.

After few days of scrambling to put out the fire, President Ma YingJeo responded in public that we can’t go back on the signed agreement as it would damage our credibility in international negotiations (true, but it does not address the question by many about signing the agreement in the first place). Further he suggested that people should not worry about their safety as there can be safeguards by private business and citizens including refusal to consume U.S. beef products as long as government does not violate the agreement. Wow! This is the first time I have ever seen a government openly absolved its own responsibility and pass it to private! That makes me wonder what promises U.S. government has given in exchange for this beef diplomacy?

Going back to the basics, one has to ask what is the fuss about eating beef and what is in the beef anyway. It turns out the answers can be complex given varying levels of industrialization of the beef production in different countries. Majority of beef consumed in U.S. and for export come from domestic feedlots enabled by cheap, federally subsidized corn. Michael Pollan had a lively discussion about it (and human consumption of food in general) in his 2006 best seller The Omnivore’s Dilemma. Roughly, 6 months after a calf was born and raised on a prairie, it spends 3 months in a pen (for weaning) and then 5 months in a centralized feedlot fed with unnatural diet of corn, fat, protein and drugs. The single dominant business objective is to maximize the amount of meat one can grow without making the cattle too sick to be sent to a slaughterhouse.

When and after being slaughtered, there are numerous opportunities for creating beef products to maximize the value and profit. Quality meat is usually not an issue. It is the utilization and handling of low quality meat and other parts of the beef that causes concerns. Indeed the updated guidelines of the World Organization for Animal Health (OIE) focus on so-called SRM (Specific Risky Materials) such as brains, skulls, eyes, trigeminal ganglia, spinal cords, vertebral columns and dorsal root ganglia from cattle 30 months of age and older, or tonsils and the distal ileum of the small intestine from cattle of all ages. For instance, they should not be used in feed since that is one way BSE gets spread to other cattle. While one may argue the guidelines should be more strict, I am ok with it as a consumer as far as policy goes as long as the guidelines are based on scientific knowledge and if there is a way to trace the suspected material.

What is more disconcerting is the ever popular ground beef and hamburger meat that most of us don’t know what is in it. On Oct 3^rd, 2009, New York Times reporter Michael Moss gave an in-depth examination of the safety of ground beef and hamburger meat. It turns out that with highly mechanized process and global trades, hamburger patties can be made from a variety of trimmings and usually low grades of meat sourced from different slaughterhouses in U.S. and abroad (thus hard to trace and safeguard). Fatal contamination of E Coli O157:H7 in public restaurants and ground beef have happened few times in last decade in U.S. though rare. I wonder what and how do Taiwan’s health organizations deal with such a potential risk. Note technically U.S. government regulations for ground beef and hamburger are different; the former has to be derived from meat only while the latter may include additions of fat, trimmings and derivative of scraps. Sounds like the Credit Default Swaps that triggered the current global financial crisis, doesn’t it?

I am disappointed at the way Taiwan government handles the U.S. beef import controversy. I am frustrated with the lack of attention to details and communication. I do enjoy eating beef, especially Chinese beef soup noodle and once in a while, a thick tender juicy steak. I am not paranoid nor do I plan to give them up for that extremely small risk. But I do want to be an educated consumer living in a place where people value science, are interested in pursuing the truth, and can discuss controversial issues objectively and logically. What about you?

Talk to you soon!

Piano Piano

Like many stereotypical Asian American parents, we bought a Yamaha U1 upright piano when kids were young and retained a piano instructor to teach them playing piano (no, they did not become pianists nor did they go to the Julliard School). The piano has been sitting quietly in our living room for many years, serving as a beautiful piece of furniture and memory since kids left the house. Recently, I decided to give it a try myself and enrolled at a Group Piano Intro class at the local community college, and here I went for my latest new venture. If you have seen the movie The Visitor (which was nominated for the best actor award in 2009 Oscar), you can probably understand my apprehension. In the first part of that movie, the main character, a music loving burned-out professor, was not getting anywhere with his effort of learning to play piano. Eventually his teacher gave up and told him bluntly the best thing he could do is to sell her his piano.

Piano is arguably the most versatile musical instrument. Most modern pianos have 88 keys with 52 white and 36 black keys that span a range of 7 and ¼ octaves from A0 to C7 (the letters refer to the familiar diatonic scale notation …ABCDEFGA…) where A4 is tuned to 440 Hz. Here is a drawing of the piano keyboard from wikipedia. In contrast, violin’s pitch ranges from G3, a little below the middle C (or C4), to C8 (4186.01 Hz), the highest pitch in piano. The pitch range of cello, another popular bowed string instrument, is from C2 (two octaves below the middle C) and A3. Human vocal cord is of course much more limiting; soprano can go as high as “high F” (or F6) while bass can get as low as A1 (55 Hz), 3 octave below the A4. No wonder piano has been a favorite tool by the composers to test and rehearse their music. In addition to being used in solos, it is also a popular instrument for accompaniment, chamber music, and ensembles.

Piano's 88 keys come in a pattern of repeating groups of 12 keys that consist of alternating 2 black and 3 white key and then 3 blacks and 4 white keys. These 12 keys are tuned to approximate the 12-tone equal temperament intonation that divides a scale of an octave into 12 equally spaced half steps (or semitones) such that ratio of the frequencies of successive tones is a constant. Since the frequencies of the notes that are one octave apart is exactly a factor of 2, mathematically and theoretically, this constant ratio can be found as the 12th root of 2. In practice, piano is tuned to reduce the inherent inharmonicity in the strings since the human auditory perception found harmonics (i.e., integer multiples of fundamental frequencies) more pleasant. As a result, octaves are normally stretched such that the high notes are higher, and the low notes lower, than they are in an equal-tempered scale as shown by the Railsback curve to the right (again from Wikipedia) from measurements of well-tuned pianos.

Piano is the short for its original Italian name clavicembalo or gravicembalo col piano e forte that literally means harpsichord with soft and loud whereby harpsichord is its popular predecessor in Renaissance and Baroque Music periods. It was first developed in late 17th and early 18th century and was believed to be created by the Italian harpsichord master maker Bartolomeo Cristofori di Francesco in Florence. However, unlike harpsichord that produces sound by plucking, piano generates sounds by hammering the strings, similar to clavichord.

It is intuitive that there are practically unlimited possibilities to compose and express different music given the range with any combination of keys, intervals, tempo that make up progressions of varying length, dynamics and so on. Even after the composer has written the music, there is still huge rooms for individual performers to interpret and express it the way they want. For example, here is a YouTube video of the famous Franz Liszt’s La Campanella (third of the six Grandes Etudes de Paganini - Etude No. 3 in G-sharp Minor). It is the recording of the preliminary recital by the blind Japanese young pianist Nobuyuki Tsuuji at the 13th Cliburn Competition earlier this year (by the way, he was a co-recipient of the gold medal award).



Below is another YouTube video of the same music, performed by Yundi Li who was the winner of the International Frederick Chopin Piano Competition in year 2000 (at age of 18, the youngest winner thus far). To my ear and with my imagination, Li's interpretation is more playful and joyful yet deliberate which is very different from Nobuyuki Tsuuji’s. The latter is full of excitement and anticipation and at times, hurried. But if you look at the total time, it was a mere 14 seconds longer for a piece of music that is almost 4 and half minutes long. It is amazing the minute differences in tempo, force, transition and so on can be felt and amplified so much in listeners’ mind through key strokes of performer’s ten flying fingers and two feet. It is indeed a powerful instrument of music!




Well, I have no idea how far I can go as I barely just got started in this venture. But for the last 6 weeks, I surely have had a lot of fun and I have begun to appreciate otherwise pretty dry music theory and what are behind the beautiful music. If nothing else, I hope I will be a more educated listener of music. Wish me luck and talk to you soon!

Murphy’s Law and Randomness

Have you ever had that sinking feeling that "Anything that can go wrong will go wrong." (aka Murphy’s Law)? Unfortunately, I just had such an experience in last few weeks. First, I got an expensive NYC “parking violation” ticket for “blocking the box at intersections” as I was stuck for more than one hour outside Holland Tunnel in a Friday afternoon rush hour. Few days later, my car battery died at age of 2 years 5 months, less than half a year after the warranty expired. Then the mechanics told me that I also need a new water pump and thermostat set. As I was busy getting my car to and from the shop for diagnosis and repairs, driver seat of our remaining working transportation in the house got stuck at an awkward position due to worn-out wiring to the motor. On top of all these, my two years old HP laptop died on me unexpectedly that interrupted my routines and suddenly severed my critical link to the outside world. How much more unlucky can one get? I asked myself.

Haven’t you ever had that exasperated negative feeling that "If anything can go wrong, it will, and it will happen at the worst possible time" (aka Finagle's corollary to Murphy's Law)? How come I am often the unlucky guy who needs to refill the paper for that stupid public copy machine despite its huge storage capacity? Why did it always happen exactly when I had no time to spare? How come my precious demo to my company top echelons ran into glitches despite careful preparation and repeated rehearsals? The only saving grace is that it does not seem to discriminate by rank or gender. Remember the embarrassing botched Windows 98 introduction demo at Comdex Show by Bill Gates?

Many have attributed those and other similar sentiments to Murphy’s Law, first coined in 1952, although one may argue an expression of such a feeling can be traced back to 1841 when an Ohio newspaper published a verse:

I never had a slice of bread,
Particularly large and wide,
That did not fall upon the floor,
And always on the buttered side.

According to the Wikipedia article, like many folklore, there have been several accounts and interpretations and the exact story of Murphy’s Law would never be known for sure. Edward Murphy is did exist however. Apparently he was an aerospace engineer who worked on a rocket sled project during late 40’s for U.S. Air Force to measure the G-force during deceleration that a pilot would experience. The legend has it that Mr. Murphy was so disgusted and made comments like “If it can happen, it will happen” when he found out that experiment failed because every wirings of the instrument was wrong and was reversed.

The spread and popularity of Murphy’s Law is probably due to how easily one can relate it to one’s personal daily life and can color it in so many interesting ways. There have been many corollaries and variants of Murphy’s Law and books were compiled and written about them. In particular the most well-known fallacy is the pessimist’s version that “because something (bad) could happen, it is inevitable that it will happen”. I suppose we all long for some explanations to why something happens and why “I am so unlucky”. But are we truly that unlucky sometimes? Or is it actually random and perfectly normal to have a burst of bad events?

Some of those feelings are easier to explain than others. One problem is we sometimes apply empirical data or experiences obtained from a totally different set of observations and vintage points. For example, we tend to relate rush hour traffic reports in terms of usual experience of waiting in checkout lines in stores when the characteristics of the two are totally different. Have you ever wondered why you almost never experienced delays in the order of what traffic reports gave you a short time ago?

Some misguided expectations are a lot more subtle and related to psychology. For instance, there is the well-known hindsight bias. A good example is those incredible stories of how good some fortunate tellers are; few “predictions” that did occur are so much more vivid in one's mind than those that did not. Confirmation bias certainly would just make it worse for those who are ready to buy into the story.

The most intriguing and the real core issuse, I believe, lies with the fact that vast majority of us are very poor judges of what is random and what is not (does this also explain why some of the stories and beliefs in religion played such prominent parts of various societies?). Here is a story to illustrate my point.

The brilliant Math Professor Theodore P. Hill of Georgia Institute of Technology used to ask his students do an assignment at home. The students could either flip a coin 200 times and record the outcomes, or they could choose to fake the 200 outcomes and report the made-up results. You can imagine some “lazy” kids did make up the outcomes and handed the results in. What impressed the students (and Tax Agencies!) was that Professor Hill can almost always identify correctly which results were faked.

His detection magic is based on the observation that one tends to underestimate significantly the likelihood of the occurrence of certain events that may sound or appear to be rare but is not. In the coin tossing experiment described above, the question for those students who choose to fake the results becomes how often and how many heads or tails in a row does he/she expect to appear? It turns out that since the calculation for such a probability of outcomes is non-trivial, most students, when faking the outcomes without knowing what to expect exactly, end up avoiding having sequences of too many consecutive heads or tails that gave away the secret. If one had bothered to work out the details and computation, it turns out that even for a 100 coin tosses, there is almost a 1 in 3 chances that a consecutive 7 heads or tails will appear. That is much higher than what most people would have guessed.

This example shed insights and psychological light into my “why me” problem. I am pretty sure there is no conspiracy nor deliberate forces that made them happen to me in such a short period of time. To his credit as a good engineer, Edward Murphy learned his lessons and advocated Defensive Design since as a result of the failed experiment in his project. My take away of my bad lucks is we all need to do more Defensive Living and make sure we do what we can to guard against what we thought was rare or unlikely random event. Just remember, it is more likely to happen than you think!

Talk to you soon!