Following the nuclear meltdown at Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant on March 11, 2011, any talks of whether the nation should lift its years-long ban on food products imported from five Japanese prefectures near the power plant have been a magnet for public opposition.
Such a reaction is understandable, given that Taiwan has been dogged by periodic food scares in recent years, from the 2011 discovery of toxic plasticizers in food additives and the 2013 adulteration of olive oil with a banned coloring agent called copper chlorophyllin, to the 2014 scandal involving edible lard oil tainted with recycled waste oil and the discovery of duck-blood pudding containing chicken blood last year.
The seemingly endless series of food scandals has significantly raised public awareness about the quality of food that they consume. Some consumers have gone so far as to stop dining out altogether and only eat home-cooked meals.
However, people should bear in mind that the import ban on foods produced in the five prefectures — Fukushima, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Gunma and Chiba — was imposed just days after the nuclear disaster — on March 25, 2011 to be exact — and was mostly for precautionary purposes.
More than five years have passed since the Fukushima disaster and many countries, such as Australia, Canada, Vietnam and Malaysia, have reopened their doors to Japanese food products.
While permitting an unconditional import of foods that might have been exposed to radiation would be a harebrained idea, banning them without scientific basis would be equally irrational.
The more logical approach would be to lift the ban, but at the same time set up regulations mandating that importers provide a radiation test report for certain high-risk food products from the five prefectures.
Such regulations have already been in place for foods from other parts of Japan since April last year, following discoveries that hundreds of food products manufactured in the five prefectures had illegally entered the nation with false origin labeling.
Under the rules, importers of Japanese food products must submit a radiation test report and obtain a place of origin certificate issued by Japanese authorities or private organizations authorized by the Japanese government that identifies the prefecture where the items are manufactured.
Along with the import ban, the government in March 2011 also ordered that nine categories of food products from other parts of Japan be subjected to batch-by-batch radiation detection at the border — fresh vegetables and fruit; frozen vegetables and fruit; fresh aquatic products; frozen aquatic products; baby formula; dairy products; seaweed; tea leaves; and drinking water.
Lifting the import ban does not mean allowing Japanese food products manufactured near the crippled power plant to enter the nation unchecked, as some Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) lawmakers have claimed, in a bid to politicize the issue and stir up public concern.
Even without the ban, there are still ample preventive measures in place to reduce the possibility of the public consuming radiation-contaminated foods.
A similar mind-set should also be adopted when reviewing the feasibility or appropriateness of opening the nation’s doors to US pork containing the feed additive ractopamine.
The US pork issue has become such a political hot potato, because it has been so politicized that any attempt to start a rational discussion about the matter is immediately dismissed as the pan-green camp trying to curry favor with the US at the expense of public health.
When it comes to food imports, it is better to let scientific evidence rather than political factors guide the way.
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