Gov't OKs raw milk shipments from another 25 Fukushima municipalities

[FBaggins]

TOKYO (Kyodo) -- The government lifted its ban on shipments of raw milk from another 25 municipalities in Fukushima Prefecture on Saturday, citing continuous declines in levels of radioactive substances, government officials said. But the ban on shipments remains in place for six towns and villages within a 20-kilometer radius of the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, as well as five other areas inside and outside of the 30-km radius zone around the plant, including Minamisoma and Iitate, they said.

The officials said the levels of radioactive substances in raw milk from the 25 municipalities, including the city of Fukushima and Koriyama, had remained below permitted levels under the Food Sanitation Law for three consecutive weeks.

The government, which imposed the shipment ban on March 21, said a maximum level of 27 becquerels of radioactive iodine per kilogram was found in raw milk at six distribution centers, against the permitted level of 300 becquerels, with a maximum of 16.9 becquerels of radioactive cesium detected, compared with the permitted level of 200 becquerels.http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110417p2g00m0dm010000c.html

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/mdnnews/news/20110417p2g00m0dm010000c.html

Must be something wrong here. I could have sworn that I've read that ths was worse than Chernobyl. But raw milk contamination levels were in the thousands of Bq/L of Iodine all the way over in Sweden (and several hundred Bq/L of Cesium. How could milk actually from Fukushima be below safety threshholds for three weeks already?

How could there be a mere 17 Bq of cesium in this milk when it was 500 all the way over in England after Chernobyl?