This is not at all scaremongering, but a regular theme, ever since the farm restrictions were predicted to be over in six weeks ack in 1986.
Using a March 2003 article, the number of farms under monitoring for Caesium contamination: more than 9000 in June 1986, according to a December 2000 BBC article just below 400 then, 386 in March 2003, 375 now. Threshold: 1,000Bq/kg. There is a special regulation to move sheep that has more than this to lower areas, away from the pet bogs, for a few weeks and wait for contamination levels to fall. The 2003 article also mentions that the then prospective new EU members wanted to impose an EU-wide threshold to their lower, 600 Bq/kg threshold.
More on farmland contamination tests in the UK here. No word about background levels, but on differences between soils, and isotopes.
Now, with a dosis factor of 1.3*10-8, 1000 Bq/kg would make 0.13 mSv per kg meat eaten, so one would have to eat a helluva' lot to get to the 20 mSv per year health safety limit, but not that much to get above, say, the German background level of 2.1 mSv/year, or even the German average exposure (i.e. involving non-natural sources like X-ray screeners) of 4.1 mSv/year. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
So the trigger level means that you need to eat 30kg/y of that animal to get the equivalent to "natural" exposure. That's not an unsignificant quantity of meat, which suggests that the threshhold is pretty low, which is fine, but does makes it kind of irresponsible to talk about the "long lasting effects" of Chernobyl when only the "odd animal" ever gets to be above such a lowish level in terms of practical consequences. In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes
