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Traveling art show has trouble getting past Japan's beef ban

A cow looking at the camera.In case you didn't know (I sure didn't), there is a Japanese ban on beef imports from Britain. That seems pretty straightforward, but it ended up causing some problems for an art exhibit traveling to Japan recently.

It seems that part of a retrospective of the British Turner Prize are works by artist Damien Hirst. Here's where it gets tricky. Hirst's art consists of preserved cows, as in whole dead cows stored in a formaldehyde solution. When presented with these preserved cows at customs, officials had to be convinced that these were not cows for consumption. Officials also had a problem with the possible fumes from the formaldehyde, but they were finally convinced that no one would be harmed.

I am all for art, but preserved cows? I also have to wonder what kind of bureaucrat would be so worried that someone would consider this stuff edible that they thought about denying it entry into the country. I guess a ban is a ban to some people.

[Via Reuters UK]

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Filed Under: Ingredients
Tags: art, asia, beef, beef ban, BeefBan, japan

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Reader comments (Page 1 of 1)

Alex

4-11-2008 @5:04PM Alex said... "Hirst's art consists of preserved cows, as in whole dead cows stored in a formaldehyde solution."

No, actually, his art consists of a lot more than dead cows in formaldehyde. This site has quite a collection of Hirst works: mostly not dead cows and, in fact, mostly not in formaldehyde.
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1 Comments / 1 Pages

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