– Fisheries Agency seeks to banish fears over radioactive fish (FIS, Dec 18, 2013):
The Fisheries Agency of Japan invited the media to tour a research facility in Onjuku, Chiba Prefecture, in an effort to address the concerns of Japanese and foreigners around possible radioactive contamination of fish from the country waters.
These fears are a result of the accident suffered by the Fukushima nuclear plant in March 2011, when an earthquake and tsunami rocked Japan.
The visit attracted foreign journalists and embassy officials, and was aimed at showing the monitoring process that is carried out to ensure that the fish is safe for consumption, reported The Japan Times.
The tests not only are applied to the fish that remain in the area, but also to those who travel long distances, to seasonal species that are popular with consumers and especially groundfish, since radioactive materials tend to settle on the ocean floor.
If fish samples exceed the safety limit, the species caught in the same area are not sent to markets.
However, there is a feeling that this initiative is carried out rather late.
“I was surprised to know that this is the first tour. It’s been almost three years from the nuclear accident,” said Andres Sanchez Braun, a reporter at EFE news agency.
There are also doubts about the process of supervision. For example, each province has its own inspection programme. For example, each prefecture has its own survey programme, but there was no clarification regarding unified standards and methods to carry out the tests.
Currently, the central government asks the prefectures of Hokkaido, Aomori, Iwate, Miyagi, Fukushima, Ibaraki and Chiba, to test fish caught in the Pacific and each prefecture draws up a monitoring regimen based on guidelines.
Japan has lost all credibility, and regardless of the spin, the truth is making them look even worse……I thought the US had lost a lot in the credibility department……but Japan is much worse.
Their inept handling of the Fukushima debacle has shown the world they are not the capable, scientifically advanced country they had shown the world. It is a fraud.
If the US is a fraud with finance, Japan is one in technology. The lies the Japanese have told, the dying Pacific, their stupid laws against telling the truth……and their history has done the rest.
Japan has never been a credible nation. Read their history, they have spent the time since 1850 to the present borrowing from other nations. Not money, but ideas, technology, in some ways looked eclectic……..but they never dug any deeper. They bought the appearance, but Fukushima has shown the appearance is a fraud.
They can try, but people won’t buy it. Even China has banned all their sea food products, and China is already suffering from their disaster, they are only a few hundred miles away from Fukushima.
They broke the food chain, far worse than destroying financial markets. It cannot be rebuilt, financial systems can always be redeveloped. Safe food is a new problem for this age…….we have lived in an era of high quality food and production, a golden age that is now gone forever. From the Safe Foods Act of 1908- until the Fukushima disaster of 2011, we have lived in an abundant era with many good choices for food. No longer.
We cannot eat fish any longer. Birds eat fish. Soon, if not already, chicken and turkey will be inedible thanks to radioactive seed and grass. Plutonium was found in our milk less than two months after the 3/11/11 debacle, so beef is off limits very soon. Same with Lamb……the food chain is very well put together, and now, it has been ruined.
Japan and TEPCO ought to be tried for genocide and their executives should be forced to live rent free at Fukushima….as they offered to pregnant women a while back.
Japan is the perfect example why corporations must never be allowed to run a nation.