Japanese Food

Profitable Activism: Sea Shepherd’s Skyrocketing Income

A graph from a recent Sankei Shimbun article shows the amount of money that the radical animal rights organization Sea Shepherd has brought in over the last ten years:

The graph, using the latest data from 2010, shows that Sea Shepherd’s income has sharply risen since the non-profit organization escalated its violent actions against Japanese whaling ships. The airing of the “Whale Wars” TV series has had an especially profitable influence.

In February, Sea Shepherd claimed victory over whalers when its aggressive and dangerous attacks forced an early end to a hunting expedition. Japan has responded by dispatching a Fisheries Agency patrol boat to provide security to its latest hunt. As usual, almost all of the 900 whales on this year’s quota will be unendangered minke whales.

Western media reports about this year’s hunt have predictably followed anti-whaling talking points about the alleged misuse of government disaster relief funds to aid the whaling program, downplaying or ignoring the fact that an important whaling community was destroyed by the March 11th tsunami. One Television New Zealand has included this quote from Sea Shepherd leader Paul Watson:

“I think that its totally disgraceful. People from around the world sending money to help the victims of the Tsunami-earthquake were not expecting their money to be used to fund killing whales in the Southern Ocean.”

Like so many of Watson’s past statements, it is a lie. The whaling program is subsidized by the Japanese government, not by international charity donations for tsunami relief. The Japanese government does not have authority over the millions of dollars of international charity donations, which are being handled by non-profit relief organizations. Television New Zealand’s failure to fact-check is lending credibility to a very ugly falsehood.

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Yoda’s Boil Japan Commercial (Star Wars + Cup Noodle)

Yoda has joined forces with Nissin in this new Cup Noodle commercial:

The previous commercial in the “Boil Japan” series featured a Gundam:

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More Radiation Testing for Food in Japan

Last month, the anti-nuclear activists at Greenpeace announced the results of independent radiation testing of Japanese seafood. Tests on 60 different fish products from four major supermarket chains found that nothing exceeded safety standards. Many products contained no detectable radiation, and the highest recorded amount was 88 becquerels per kilogram (in “wakasagi” lake smelt from Ibaraki Prefecture). The test results should be reassuring, since the highest amount was much lower than the 500 bequerels per kilogram safety limit set by the government. It was even less than the amount of natural radioactivity found in bananas(130 Bq/kg) or brazil nuts (444 Bq/kg).

Nevertheless, consumer fear about radiation remains, and some organizations are conducting their own radiation tests. Here are a few recent examples:

Authorities in Tokyo began their own program aimed at testing the safety of food being sold in the city:

The 500 items will include processed foods that regular households consume almost daily, such as tofu, boiled beans, juice and jam. Fresh food subject to inspection will include meat–except beef, because the metropolitan government is already conducting blanket testing on cows–milk, eggs, vegetables and fish.

Among other food items, the inspections will focus on items regularly consumed by children, according to the officials.

Metropolitan government officials will visit supermarkets and other retailers to seek their cooperation, buying 20 to 30 items per week from stores that will then be checked with handheld geiger counters.

If any of the foodstuffs are found to contain 50 becquerels per kilogram or more of radioactive substances, they will go through additional tests using germanium detectors.

The test results will be displayed on the Web site of the Tokyo metropolitan government, which also will release the names of products found to contain radioactive substances above provisional standards set by the central government.

Rice farmers in Fukushima are banding together to enforce a “near-zero limit” on cesium in rice (as opposed to the 500 becquerels/kg safety limit set by the national government):

A self-imposed, near-zero limit on radiation in rice may help spur sales from Fukushima, which was the fourth-largest producer in Japan last year, representing about 5 percent of the total harvest. The prefectural office of Zen-Noh, Japan’s biggest farmers group, plans to only ship cesium-free rice to address safety concerns, as does the National Confederation of Farmers Movements, which includes about 30,000 producers nationwide.
“We advise our members to test their rice for radiation and sell only if results show no cesium is detected,” said Yoshitaka Mashima, vice chairman of the confederation. The government has tried to “hide inconvenient information, which is deepening consumer distrust.”
The near-zero limit was set as very low levels of cesium are hard to detect. Testing equipment in Japan is unable to verify levels of cesium in food below 5 becquerels a kilogram, according to Mashima.

AEON, Japan’s largest retail chain, is enacting its own “near-zero” radiation policy for food sold in its supermarkets:

…it is moving to zero radiation contamination of its food products. This includes all seafood – which is a central part of the Japanese diet – sold by AEON.

To achieve this, AEON is strengthening its radiation screening, releasing the results to the public, and stopping sales of products they find to contain any amount of radioactive contamination, not just those that are below official government safety levels.

It doesn’t look like they will be applying the “zero radiation” rule to foods that contain radioactive potassium (bananas, nuts, potatoes, beer, etc.). It’s a good thing that there will be more tests for radiation, but it is very misleading for stores to market themselves as radiation-free when selling foods that contain natural radiation.

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Royal Family Will Not Receive Dried Persimmons From Fukushima

Every year, Japan’s royal family receives a gift of dried persimmons (anpo gaki) from the Date district of Fukushima prefecture. However, that will not be happening this year because tests have found that the persimmon crop from that area contains relatively high levels of cesium.

The farmers cannot give them the gift, so they won’t be receiving it:

Shipments from the area have been banned. As you can see from the video, farmers are dumping thousands of persimmons into fields, where the fruit will rot.

One farmer tells the reporters that he is angry because he’s received no apology from Tepco or the national government. Local farmers are taking photos of the piles of fruit to use as evidence for the financial compensation that they will be demanding from Tepco.

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Will Fukushima Produce Be Exported As Foreign Aid?

Some of the food that the Japanese government sends to poor countries as foreign aid might come from Fukushima prefecture, and anti-nuclear activists are angry about it:

The activists don’t care if the food passes safety inspections. They seem to have already concluded that “Fukushima = “deadly radiation,” so any food from that prefecture is dangerous. One of the women in the video is so scared of radiation that she sent her children away from Tokyo. Forget about whether there is any credible threat to human health: just think about all the children who are in danger!!!!!!!1!!

It is a sad situation for the farmers of Fukushima. They’ve worked so hard to grow their crops, and thankfully, most of the prefecture’s agricultural products have been found to be safe. It was feared that rice would be heavily contaminated, but that a majority of Fukushima rice has passed tests. Despite this, there is still great ignorance and fear about radiation, and an anti-nuclear lobby that is more that happy to spread sensational (and groundless) claims about about the dangers of Fukushima produce. A lot of farmers will be losing money because people wrongly believe that their crops are dangerous.

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Japanese Commercial Addresses Radiation Concerns: Our Mushrooms Are Safe!

The Yukiguni Maitake company has started airing commercials that inform consumers about its strict in-house safety tests, the results of which can be easily found on its website:

Singer Hiromi Go has been hired as a spokesman for the new advertising campaign. In the video, we are shown a clip of the TV commercial and a demonstration of how to check radiation test results.

Because mushrooms are particularly vulnerable to environmental pollution, the company has been conducting strict safety testing for years. The recent nuclear accident in Fukushima has heightened public fears about food contamination, so the company is conducting radiation tests on every “lot” of mushrooms that it ships and is making the test result data accessible on its homepage.

Every package of Yukiguni Maitake mushrooms has the following label:

Using a mobile phone, anyone can access safety testing data by reading the QR code. Alternatively, they can go to the company’s homepage and enter the lot number or the production date printed on the label (found in the red box in the example pic).

Downloadable data includes the amount of radioactive cesium detected, as well as the test results for a large number of other potentially dangerous substances, such as pesticides and heavy metals.

The ability to scan a package and see its radiation data before buying it is a stroke of marketing brilliance. Even if other companies are selling mushrooms from areas that have passed government mandated radiation tests, worried consumers will probably feel more comfortable buying Yukiguni’s products.

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