Food safety administration
in the EU and Japan
The new DPJ administration has pledged to revise Japan’s food safety administrative structure. In a seminar held at the EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation, speakers from Japan and the EU introduced their food safety systems and discussed current developments.
Opening speaker Patrick Deboyser of the European Commission to Thailand noted that the EU is the world’s largest importer of agricultural and fisheries products. Following the BSE and other scandals, 2002 saw both the EU’s General Food Law Regulation entering into force, and the establishment of the European Food Safety Authority. In a sign of food safety’s huge importance to the EU, the legislation was passed in record time.
Japan has been through a similar process, but according to Ichiro Fujita of the Department of Food Safety, Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, until a spate of serious scandals, the food safety issue was barely on the table. “Although Japanese consumers were very demanding in terms of food safety, there was very little understanding of risk,” he said. “It was just assumed that food was safe.”
That has certainly changed now. Like the EU, Japan has some of the strictest food safety rules in the world. “Both Japan and the EU stand out as leaders in the world of food safety,” said Duco Delgorge, vice-chairman of the EBC.
The problem, however, is that uncoordinated rules obstruct food trade in both directions. Delgorge lamented the fact that even shipments of “the safest possible imaginable organic food” require extra paperwork at customs. He described mutual recognition of food safety rules as a “dream scenario.”
The speakers also discussed how food safety scandals are handled as they break, with Fujita emphasizing the importance of timing announcements to avoid panic. But with such a visceral subject as food – even within the EU – cultural differences can make the work of food safety experts even more difficult.
An example that Deboyser gave participants is the BSE scare. When beef on the bone was banned in the UK, British people rushed to stock up their freezers with beef. Yet, in Germany – where there hadn’t been a single case of BSE – veal sales went down dramatically.