The Daily Yomiuri (Tokyo)| April 18, 2003
A series of food-related scandals, including an outbreak of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease, and subsequent mislabeling incidents, have deeply damaged public trust in food. Starting today, The Daily Yomiuri will look into various aspects of this issue in this monthly column. The first installment will deal with problems concerning imported food.
By Tokiko Oba and Mikiko Miyakawa
Daily Yomiuri Staff Writers
The growing flood of imported food seems to overwhelm people as they wonder how to ensure the safety of what they eat.
By 2000, the nation's calorie-based food self-sufficiency rate had dwindled to 40 percent, placing it among the lowest ranked of developed countries, according to the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry. The food self-sufficiency rate for the United States and Britain were 125 percent and 74 percent, respectively.
In 2001 alone, Japan imported about 32.5 million tons of food, including vegetables, meat, processed foods and beverages, up 8.2 percent from the previous year. The United States was the largest exporter of farm products to Japan, followed by the European Union and China.
Faced with the threat of prohibited foods entering the market, quarantine officials are tightening controls on foods that fail to meet the nation's safety criteria.
In a room at the Quarantine Station in Kanazawa Ward, Yokohama, on Tuesday morning officials began checking boxes of vegetables to make sure the items corresponded with those on a list they carried.
In the next room, researchers were preparing okra imported from Thailand for analysis by removing the calyces and putting the pods into a huge food processor.
"There's no certain vegetable that comes in at a certain time of the year. We've a lot of okra today because it's come up for full sampling," Mitsue Ota, an analyst at the station said. "All kinds of vegetables are coming in constantly."
After processing the okra into a paste mixed with solvent, analysts filtered it to remove dirt and impurities. The sample was then placed in a gas chromatograph, where it was left overnight. The following morning, the gas chromatograph would show pesticide levels in the okra. Loopholes in inspections
If a sample is found to contain pesticide levels above national safety standards, the station reports it to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry. Based on the report, the ministry decides what the importer should do with the produce--return it to the exporting country or dispose of it.
"I feel responsible when I examine samples because ministry orders to importers are based on our analyses," Ota said.
The Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Ministry's Center for Food Quality, Labeling and Consumer Services conducts similar tests on both imported and domestic products already on the market.
While food imports are examined at one of the nation's 31 quarantine stations, including ones in Yokohama, Kobe and Narita, Chiba Prefecture, most only undergo a paper check.
"Because of a shortage of quarantine officials, I'm sorry to say the inspections aren't thorough enough," Masataka Ishiguro, head of the Nominren Food Analysis Center in Itabashi Ward, Tokyo said.
The number of quarantine officials nationwide stood at 283 as of April 1.
Only 2.4 tons of the 32.5 million tons or so of imported food--just 7.4 percent--were examined in 2001. In the case of fresh vegetables, only 6.8 percent of the total of 997,000 tons was examined. Of the inspected produce, 729 tons, or 1.06 percent, did not meet Japanese standards.
The situation was more serious in the case of frozen foods. Only 21,501 tons of about 717,000 tons of frozen vegetables imported in 2001--2.9 percent--were examined. Ninety-three tons, or 0.43 percent, did not meet national standards.
More surprisingly, it was only after Ishiguro's group found that some frozen Chinese vegetables contained illegal pesticide levels that the government started examining imported frozen vegetables.
Three of 16 types of frozen Chinese vegetables the group analyzed in February and March 2002 turned out to have illegal levels of pesticides, including chlorpyrifos, the use of which is banned in Japan.
The maximum allowable residual chlorpyrifos level is 0.01 parts per million (ppm), but the Nominren center found frozen spinach a major supermarket chain imported from China had nine times that level.
"It turned out the government hadn't taken the proper steps as far as frozen foods were concerned," Ishiguro said.
In response, the health ministry started sampling imported frozen spinach for residual pesticide in late March. Frozen Chinese spinach already on the market turned up with as much as 2.5 ppm of chlorpyrifos, 250 times higher than the standard.
After finding a number of violations in Chinese frozen spinach, the ministry finally ordered importers in July to refrain from importing the product from China.
In the wake of this scandal, the Food Sanitation Law was revised in September so the government could comprehensively ban imports of food items suspected of posing a serious threat to human health.
The self-restraint order was lifted in February after Tokyo and Beijing agreed that China would export only frozen spinach checked by its quarantine officials.
In the year ending in mid-February, 16,234 tons of frozen spinach were imported from China in 1,212 lots. Of 658 shipments examined, 47 violated standards--a 7.1 percent irregularity rate. The ministry said, however, all frozen spinach imported after August was within the standard.
Rumi Matsumoto, a ministry official, said Chinese frozen spinach importers also must test for residual pesticides, and no violations have been reported since February. "But we may have to ask importers not to import (frozen spinach from China) if it's found to contain pesticides above the government-set level," Matsumoto said. Awareness questioned
While the spinach dispute seemed settled, Ibaraki University Prof. Kiichi Nakajima said the problem was more deep-rooted.
China is the largest exporter of vegetables to Japan, supplying about 40 percent of the imported vegetables in the country.
Though China tightened controls on farm exports to Japan, Chinese farmers' awareness about the use of agricultural chemicals is believed to be relatively low, Nakajima said. According to civic group members who visited China last year, people there reportedly have died from poisoning after eating vegetables, and soaps are peddled at supermarkets with claims that they can remove residual pesticide.
"I wonder if it's right to leave things as they are in China when Japan imports highly controlled, safe foods from the country," the professor said.
Civic groups also expressed concerns.
"The problem was settled between Japan and China, but we might have similar problems with other countries," Kenji Nomoto of Shoku no Anzen wo Kangaeru Kai, a Kawasaki-based consumers group promoting safer food said.
Nakajima also criticized today's food supply system, under which even perishable foods, including vegetables, are transported between countries. "I think it's time for people to think seriously about their food choices," he said.:
