It is apparent that President Tsai Ing-wen’s (蔡英文) administration is moving toward lifting or easing a controversy-dogged import ban on food products from five Japanese prefectures to remove one of the major hurdles to deeper Taipei-Tokyo ties.
Such efforts have already met with opposition from the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and health-conscious people. Now with the discovery of a sauce containing an ingredient from one of the five prefectures, Tsai’s plan to relax the ban could face more scrutiny.
Earlier this week, the Food and Drug Administration confirmed that soy sauce packets in Japanese fermented soy bean products, known as natto, sold by supermarkets and Japanese fast-food chain Yoshinoya was produced in Japan’s Ibaraki Prefecture.
Food imports from Ibaraki, Fukushima, Tochigi, Gunma and Chiba prefectures were banned shortly after the Fukushima Dai-ichi power plant meltdown in March 2011.
A day after the discovery, the administration rejected entry to Taiwan at the Port of Taichung of five natto products that contained soy sauce from two of the five prefectures.
News of banned Japanese foodstuffs being imported was also reported earlier this week in Kaohsiung, where health authorities found flavored jelly believed to have been manufactured in Gunma.
On Tuesday, the Tainan Bureau of Health made public the results of an inspection it undertook last month, which found that three of the Japanese food products it examined were actually from one of the five prefectures.
Publication of such discoveries might send a message to the public that local health authorities are doing their job and stepping up border control and market inspections of high-risk food products.
However, such news might also reverse the traditionally positive public perception of Japanese products and reinforce the beliefs of some that it is a bad idea to reopen the nation’s doors to foodstuffs from the five prefectures.
Prior to the 2011 nuclear catastrophe, the phrase “made in Japan” was synonymous with high-quality electronics and food. However, the public’s fear of radiation contamination has deterred people from purchasing food from Japan.
The recent series of discoveries of banned Japanese food products being sneaked into the country also risks nullifying the Cabinet’s efforts to reassure the public that tight border controls and stringent regulations are sufficient to protect people from consuming radiation-tainted food. They also play right into the hands of the KMT, which has pointed to the illegally imported food items — most of which were found after they were already in stores — as proof that Tsai’s administration is incapable of ensuring food safety.
It does not matter that the soy sauce packet in Yoshinoya’s natto products was found to be free of radiation; what the public is going to be fixated on is the possibility that there could be other food products illegally imported from the five prefectures, some of which might have been contaminated.
Given the developments, Japan’s Interchange Association Chairman Mitsuo Ohashi’s hopes — expressed at the 41st Taiwan-Japan trade and economic talks last month that import restrictions be lifted immediately — have become even slimmer.
All eyes are on how Tsai intends to assuage concerns that lifting the ban would be in the public’s best interests. She has to convince the public that her planned relaxation of the ban is not just another diplomatic compromise the nation has to make at the expense of public welfare to survive in the international and regional communities.
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