Farmers' movement for safe food is in progress
As Japan's farmers' movement is making constant progress in the effort to secure food safety, the National Campaign for Defense of the People's Food and Health held its 14th general meeting from May 14-15 in Tokyo.
The campaign started in 1984 when farmers, workers, and consumers carried out demonstrations against the government import of bromide-contaminated South Korean rice to make up for the shortfall in domestic production caused by forcible cuts in paddy acreage.
Now the movement has developed to call for a variety of measures to safeguard Japan's agriculture and ensure food safety by the power of cooperation between producers and consumers.
As part of this, the campaign is calling on local schools to use bread made from domestic wheat. The campaign's Ibaraki Branch is promoting a movement to ask the prefectural assembly to encourage schools to use wheat and soybeans produced in the prefecture.
The Nagano Branch secretary reported that prefectural government officials are asking local municipalities to assure that school lunches be made up of 100-percent local products.
As regards the Koizumi government's policy on rice, National Federation of Farmers' Movement (Nominren) Vice President Majima Yoshitaka reported that the average income of a rice-producing household is less than the legal minimum wage and is one-fifth of a worker's wage in the manufacturing industry. He denounced the government for trying to lower the producer's rice price, decrease rice paddy acreage, and encourage large corporations to increase profits from their business in rice.
On food safety, the director of the Federation's laboratory on food testing called for a strengthened system to monitor food safety. He cited residual chemicals in chilled spinach, and imported meat contaminated by epidemic colon virus as hazards to safety. He called for the use of domestic flour for school lunches because the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry's standards on post-harvest chemicals are very lax. (end)