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Kanju Kurosawa kept his 50 dairy cows alive by carting water from a neighboring town after local supplies were knocked out by the March 11 earthquake.

By the time taps flowed again on March 19, Kurosawa and his 80-year-old father had trucked 12,000 liters (3,100 gallons) for the herd -- less than half its requirement. Milk output is at half the pre-quake levels, he said, and what’s produced is considered unfit for human consumption because of the dairy’s proximity to the Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s stricken nuclear power plant, 52 kilometers (32 miles) away.

Concern that radioactive emissions from the Fukushima Dai- Ichi facility will contaminate food and cause cancer are prohibiting hundreds of dairy farmers like Kurosawa from selling their milk. With no compensation, Kurosawa, 53, said he doesn’t know how long he can continue the 70-year-old family business.

“We don’t know how dairy farmers in Fukushima will survive,” said Kurosawa, who estimates he’s losing 60,000 yen to 70,000 yen ($740-$865) a day on his farm in Iino, 235 kilometers north of Tokyo. “I want to stick it out, but I don’t know how long the radiation impact will last and whether the spring grass will be contaminated. I can’t continue if I have to buy all my feed.”

Radiation Contamination

Fukushima supplied about 1.3 percent of Japan’s 2009 annual milk production of about 7.91 million tons, according to government statistics. Prime Minister Naoto Kan asked local officials to suspend milk shipments from the region’s 567 dairy farms after random tests found levels of radiation that exceeded government-prescribed safe levels.

Milk shouldn’t be consumed from the local area until tests for radioactive iodine have been completed, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna. Farmers in Fukushima have been told to keep their animals in barns and not to feed them fodder kept outside.

More than half of Kurosawa’s produce would be used in local schools and supermarkets, with the remainder sold to either Meiji Holdings Co. or Morinaga Milk Industry Co.

Contaminated milk was linked to more than 6,000 cases of thyroid cancer in children and adolescents in Belarus, Ukraine and Russia in the two decades following the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster in Ukraine. Iodine-131 was the main contributor to radiation poisoning, the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation wrote in a 2008 report.

Milk shipments from Fukushima will likely remain suspended at least until the crisis at the nuclear plant is resolved, said Mitsuhiro Honda at the milk and dairy products division of the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries.

Contaminated Seawater

Fuel rods at the nuclear plant have been damaged, releasing five kinds of radioactive material and contaminating seawater nearby, Tokyo Electric said today.

“Some of the farmers may abandon the business and destroy their cows, too, as they don’t know how long the shipment restrictions will continue,” said Saori Kabeya, an official with Fukushima prefecture’s livestock department.

The affected farmers will be compensated, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters in Tokyo yesterday.

“Fundamentally, the primary responsibility is on Tokyo Electric as it stems from the nuclear disaster,” Edano said. “If it can’t compensate fully, the central government will guarantee them.”

Kurosawa’s last milk delivery was March 12. He had to borrow a neighbor’s generator to power dairy machinery after electricity supply was interrupted by the 9.0-magnitude earthquake. His cows remain stressed by the temblor and aftershocks, he said.

‘Head Butt’

“We couldn’t go into to the barn because they would kick and head butt” after the quake, Kurosawa said. “Cows are like humans, they get very nervous and worried that such a large earthquake may come again.”

In Aizu county, about 100 kilometers from the Fukushima plant, dairy farmer Masahiko Kaneko hasn’t been able to buy cattle feed for weeks. As his hay and silage stockpiles decline, so does the milk from his 34-cow herd. Production is down as much as 20 percent to less than 600 liters a day since the earthquake.

A March 18 test on Kaneko’s milk showed levels of radioactive iodine measuring 4 becqueral per kilogram -- less than 2 percent of the government’s prescribed safety limit of 300 Bq/kg. Japan’s Food Safety Commission is reviewing acceptable radioactivity levels in food and may set new standards in a week, it said today.

“I cannot see any light at the end of the tunnel,” Kaneko, 53, said. “My cows are getting thinner and thinner day by day.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Kanoko Matsuyama in Singapore at kmatsuyama2@bloomberg.net Aya Takada in Tokyo at atakada2@bloomberg.net To contact the reporters on this story Jae Hur in Tokyo at jhur1@bloomberg.net.