Now the Japanese government is saying that radioactive contaminated meat from 578 head of cattle has been sold in supermarkets and restaurants across Japan in recent weeks -- up from the original six head of cattle, then 42, then 143, that it was admitting to last week. And the way it happened is nothing short of a crime against humanity:

Radioactive material has been detected in a range of produce, including spinach, tea leaves, milk and fish. Contaminated hay has been found at farms more than 85 miles from the crippled Fukushima Daiichi plant, suggesting that the radioactive fallout has reached a wider area than first suspected.

Still, because of a severe shortage of testing equipment, and local governments that are still swamped with disaster relief, only a small percentage of farm products grown in the region get checked for radiation.

The government has suspended agricultural shipments from within a radius of about 12 miles around the Fukushima plant, as well as a number of other identified radiation "hot spots." But farms outside those areas, even those relatively close to the plant, have faced few restrictions in shipping their produce....

Cattle from some areas with high radiation readings, including here in Minamisoma, a city in Fukushima Prefecture, had been checked for radiation on the surface of their skins before being shipped to market. But those checks do not sufficiently measure whether cattle have been exposed to radiation internally by eating contaminated feed, officials say.

The scary thought is that if it happened in the United States, the government response here probably would not be a whole lot better.