Governments Limit Sale of Contaminated Reindeer Meat : Chernobyl Accident Threatens Lapps’ Life Style

Lapp herdsmen saw nothing out of the ordinary when snow began falling on their grazing reindeer in the northern Swedish wilderness last April 27.

In the following days, however, they got the news that plunged them into despair they still feel today.

The news was about the Chernobyl nuclear accident in the Soviet Ukraine, almost 1,300 miles away, and radiation in the snow could turn much of the meat of their 275,000 reindeer into radioactive waste for years to come.

Sale Ban Imposed

The Swedish government’s Food Board clamped a nationwide ban on the sale of all uninspected reindeer meat, a popular delicacy.

Seventy-five percent of the first 27,000 head slaughtered last fall failed government tests because of unacceptable contamination with cesium-137, one of the longer-lasting elements of the Chernobyl fallout, said Jorgen Bohlin, spokesman for the Lapp National Union.

The Lapps, once the original nomad inhabitants of northern Scandinavia, today constitute a tiny ethnic minority struggling to hold on to their centuries-old grazing land in an uneasy coexistence with modern energy, forestry and tourism interests.

Although only 2,500 of the 15,000 Swedish Lapps depend on reindeer herding for their livelihood, it is the foundation of the Lapp culture, Bohlin said in an interview.

“It provides the basis of Lapp settlement areas where the language and the traditions can be kept alive.”

40,000 Lapps Left

The Lapp population totals 40,000 people spread over the mountains, forests and lakes of northern Sweden, Norway, Finland and the Soviet Kola Peninsula.

In Sweden, their traditional reindeer-based culture dwindled in the 19th and 20th centuries as the government urged assimilation and let Swedish settlers exploit Lappland’s iron ore deposits, rivers and forests.

Some ground was regained in recent decades after a shift in government attitude and an increasing cultural awareness among the Lapps. The reindeer industry today is a highly efficient enterprise involving snowmobiles, helicopters and radiotelephones.

The Swedish government has promised full compensation for every reindeer declared unfit for consumption. But Bohlin says many Lapps feel insecure about the future.

“We used to raise the reindeer with love,” one herdsman said on a TV documentary. “After the slaughter, the meat, the skin, the horns, all was used. Now it all feels meaningless. The work, the life . . . all goes to waste.”

Widespread Damage

Some of the contaminated meat will be used as mink food, while the rest will be buried.

In addition, the Chernobyl disaster has contaminated much of the wild game, fish and berries that are mainstays of the Lapp diet and way of life.

Reindeer are particularly vulnerable to cesium contamination because they graze over large areas on lichen, a plant that builds up higher concentrations of cesium than most other plants and also is slower in disposing of radioactive substances.

Experts don’t know how long the lichen will be contaminated.

“There has been talk about seven years, but I think it could take even longer in many parts,” said Olof Eriksson, a lichen expert with the Agricultural University at Uppsala.

Government controls on reindeer are at the center of a heated debate.

Limit on Contamination

Swedish authorities have imposed a cesium-137 limit of 300 becquerels per kilogram (2.2 pounds) on commercial foodstuffs, including reindeer meat.

A becquerel is a unit used to measure the activity of a radioactive substance.

Jack Valentin, a geneticist and a department head at the National Institute for Radiation Protection, said it is not hazardous to occasionally eat reindeer meat containing radiation far above the limit.

But he said the function of the limit is to make sure that after Chernobyl, no Swedes accumulate an unacceptable annual radiation dose.

Critics claim, however, that the limit is an unnecessarily strict measure.

“If the meat really was dangerous it would be somewhat easier to accept the future fate of the Lapps,” four professors wrote in the newspaper Dagens Nyheter. “But they are sacrificed without factual reason because of political tactics and crass agricultural interests.”

Norway Raises Limits

Valentin countered that it is not unusual among Lapps to consume more than 200 pounds of reindeer meat a year.

“Such amounts would sharply increase the risk of malformed babies among pregnant women and lead to a general, although very small, increase of the cancer risk,” he said.

Norway, which has 20,000 Lapps, recently raised its reindeer meat limit from 600 to 6,000 becquerels per kilo to save the country’s reindeer industry. Finland’s limit is 1,000 becquerels.

Valentin said a moderate relaxation of the Swedish limit might be decided early next year.

Such a move, Bohlin said, could save a substantial number of the animals up for slaughter next autumn.