TOKYO:
For Japanese shoppers, food safety was taken for granted until the Fukushima
crisis. Now many have lost faith in government guarantees and fear that
radiation could have contaminated their diet.
Meltdowns at the nuclear plant in the
aftermath of last year's tsunami sent poisonous radioactive particles into the
air and water, blanketing crops grown near the power station and polluting
waters where seafood is harvested.
A number of Fukushima products were taken off
the official menu, with government bans on beef, milk, mushrooms and some green
vegetables.
But consumers were unconvinced by the measures
and began steering clear of produce from anywhere near the affected area,
leaving farmers with fields full of crops they could not sell and fishermen
with catches worth nothing.
Miwa Yokono says she would like to give
locally caught fish to her one-year-old son, but does not believe it is safe.
"I want him to eat as much fish as
possible because that's his favourite... but I think radiation accumulates in
creatures at the top of the food chain," she said.
Yokono, 27, now buys imported fish, but says
she would support Japanese trawlermen if she knew what she was buying was safe.
The problem for Yokono is that she -- along
with a significant proportion of the Japanese shopping public -- does not trust
the government's safety standards.
In the immediate aftermath of the nuclear
crisis, Tokyo announced it was raising the permitted level of radiation in food
by a factor of five, meaning produce that would previously have been thrown out
was suddenly alright.
Rice grown just a short distance from the
plant was declared safe after spot sampling, but later tests revealed radiation
levels far higher than even the new raised limits.
Hiroaki Koide, assistant professor at Kyoto
University Research Reactor Institute, said the official declaration that food
with five times the previous "safe" level of radiation was fit for
consumption raised suspicions the government was acting on behalf of producers,
instead of consumers.
"It's too high. The government set the
provisional safety standard to cope with the reality, rather than to protect
people," he told AFP.
In response to public pressure, Tokyo says
that from April no food will be permitted for sale if it has more than 100
becquerels of radiation per kilogramme (two pounds), down from 500 at present.
But Takashi Sato, an official at Fukushima
Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Associations, said even with the new
stricter cap, the Made In Fukushima brand is tainted.
"People don't believe in the government's
screening system. We want the government to work to convince the public that
the new cap is genuinely safe," he said.
Kunio Shiraishi, a former senior researcher at
the National Institute of Radiological Sciences, said the current regime of
sample inspections has been a problem for public confidence and says blanket
testing is the way forwards.
But he admitted this would not be easy,
especially with food from the oceans.
"What is most frightening for Japanese
people is radiation in seafood rather than food on earth, because we take lots
of minerals from fish and seaweed," he said.
For Japan's powerful farming and fishing
industries, the lack of public trust is not just a problem at home -- it is
also affecting what they can sell abroad.
Exports of Japanese farm products -- once a
favourite of the country's Asian neighbours who prized their safety and quality
-- fell 7.4 percent in 2011 from the previous year while exports of marine
products dropped 10.9 percent.
Eight countries including China and South
Korea are still blocking the import of several vegetables produced in parts of
northern and eastern Japan.
In a bid to regain shoppers' trust, Japan's
largest supermarket chain, Aeon, has decided to ignore government guidelines
and carry out its own tests on the food it sells.
Aeon vice president Yasuhide Chikazawa says
setting a "safe limit" for radiation is meaningless because consumers
are unwilling to accept it.
"It's only after you get radiation test
results of 'not detectable' that you can compete with global producers on a
level playing field," he said.
Chikazawa said that when the supermarket chain
introduced its zero-tolerance policy, they encountered resistance from
producers in radiation-hit areas.
"But they finally realised that this was
the ultimate way of protecting them," Chikazawa said.
AFP
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