MAFF Publishes Basic Policy on Handling Food Safety Crises

On February 17, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries (MAFF) published a basic policy on preparing against emergency situations in which the safety of the food supply is endangered by a new type of virus or other such threat. The policy calls for closer cooperation with the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare and the Food Safety Commission. If the source of the problem is at the production stage, it proposes that MAFF require manufacturers of agricultural chemicals and fertilizers to stop shipping and recall their products, and call on food producers to refrain from using such chemicals and fertilizers and recall their products.

The kind of emergency envisaged by the policy document is one in which a hitherto unknown disease causes widespread food poisoning or a new virus, or other cause for which there is not yet a full scientific explanation, causes or threatens to cause such damage.

The basic policy emphasizes the collection and analysis of data and calls for active exchange of information with academic and other experts at ordinary times. In an emergency, a countermeasures headquarters would be established within the Ministry.

MAFF plans to use this basic policy as a basis for the elaboration of more detailed measures.
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Government Issues Unprecedented Message to the Public on Dealing With Avian Influenza

On March 9, the government published a document titled "To the People of Japan" giving advice on dealing with avian influenza (fowl plague), and sent copies to all prefectural governments. The government's aim is to combat the fears and rumors that have circulated as the disease has spread, by giving correct information and to seek a calm response on the part of the general public. It is unprecedented for the government to address such a message on measures against infection to the public. The government plans to take every possible measure to halt the spread of the disease, including changes to legislation.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda announced the publication of the message at a press conference. Among other advice, the document recommends that chicken meat be cooked thoroughly before eating, and says that, although there are no reports of raw eggs being detrimental to human health, people should cook eggs if they are worried about their safety. Those keeping chickens are urged, if a number of birds die from unidentified causes, not to touch the bodies with bare hands and to consult their local public health center or other relevant authority.

On the transmission of avian influenza to humans, the document says, "Since the beginning of the year, there have been 32 cases of avian influenza in human beings worldwide, but the slaughtering of infected chickens in this country has been thorough and the likelihood of transmission is very low."

Besides mounting this public information campaign, the government is engaged in discussions with a view to amending the Law for the Control of Infectious Diseases in Animals.
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Government Approves Package of Measures Against Avian Influenza

A meeting of Cabinet ministers with responsibility for measures to combat avian influenza (fowl plague) approved a package of emergency measures against the disease on the morning of March 16. The package centers on the submission of a bill to the Diet that would amend the Law for the Control of Infectious Diseases in Animals to include (i) heavier penalties for neglect to declare outbreaks of the disease, with a view to encouraging prompt reporting and (ii) measures to support poultry farmers in the area surrounding a farm where there has been an outbreak who comply with the ban on the movement of poultry and poultry products (e.g. shipments of eggs).

The decision to impose heavier penalties was prompted by the lessons learned after the delay in reporting an outbreak of avian influenza at a poultry farm in Tanba-cho, Kyoto Prefecture, allowed the disease to spread. The current penalties are a prison term of up to one year or a fine of up to 500,000 yen. The government plans to consider how far these should be increased at an early date.

The system of financial support to poultry farmers whose business has suffered from the outbreak of the disease is to be enhanced by extending its scope to cover farmers outside areas in which the movement of poultry and poultry products is banned and allowing more time for repayment of loans, among other measures. In particular, the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry will collaborate in providing loan guarantees to small and medium enterprises and mid-range companies in the food services industry.

The package also includes financial support to local governments with a view to ensuring that measures introduced under the Law for the Control of Infectious Diseases in Animals do not place an excessive burden on their operations.

As a precaution against the disease spreading to humans, the government is considering stockpiling an anti-influenza drug said to be effective against avian influenza. If an outbreak of a new mutation of the influenza virus is confirmed, the government may designate the disease a "designated infectious disease" and take steps to prevent its spread by isolating patients.

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Ban on Imports of Poultry From US and Canada to Continue

At the press conference following the Cabinet meeting on February 24, Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Yoshiyuki Kamei told reporters that, following the announcement that the outbreak of avian influenza (fowl plague) in the state of Texas involved a highly pathogenic strain of the virus, Japan would maintain its ban on imports of live poultry and poultry meat from the United States until 90 days after Texas was confirmed to be free of the disease.

Until now, all outbreaks of avian influenza in the United States had been of low pathogenicity and although it had initially suspended imports from all parts of the United States, Japan was due to lift the ban with regard to all states except those in which outbreaks had been reported, once the outbreaks were confirmed as being of low pathogenicity.

On March 10, Japan also suspended imports of live poultry and poultry meat from all parts of Canada after an outbreak of avian influenza was confirmed in the state of British Columbia.
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Japan-Mexico FTA to Take Effect in January 2005

On March 12, Japan and Mexico reached a basic agreement in their negotiations over the formation of a bilateral free trade agreement (FTA). The agreement abolishes tariffs or establishes low-tariff or tariff-free quotas on some 300 agricultural products. The two governments will now set to work on finalizing the text of the FTA document, aiming to put the agreement into effect on January 1, 2005. At a press conference on March 12, Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Yoshiyuki Kamei said he believed the agreement would have little impact on domestic agriculture, telling reporters, "We have striven throughout to ensure that the agreement would not go against our efforts to ensure the security of Japan's food supply and implement a structural reform of Japan's agricultural sector. We have achieved this objective."

This will be Japan's second FTA, following on from that with Singapore. However, as the FTA with Singapore effectively treats agricultural products as an exception, the agreement with Mexico will be Japan's first comprehensive FTA.

In the negotiations between the two agriculture ministers on March 9, the Mexican minister accepted, in broad outline, the final concessions proposed by Japan in January this year. With regard to pork, which had been a focal issue, the agreement sets a low-tariff quota that halves the current tariff on meat whose import price exceeds 393 yen/kg, to 2.2%, and expands the quota from 38,000 tons in the first year to 80,000 tons in the fifth year.

A low-tariff quota halving the tariff on orange juice will likewise increase from 4,000 tons in the first year to 6,500 tons in the fifth year. As Japan has virtually no imports from to Mexico of beef, chicken or fresh oranges and these are products in which Mexico has expressed an interest, the agreement establishes tariff-free quotas of 10 tons each, for sales promotion purposes, over the first two years. Thereafter, it sets low-tariff import quotas of 6,000 tons for beef, 8,500 tons for chicken and 4,000 tons for fresh oranges. The tariffs to be applied will be discussed at future talks.

Meanwhile, in the mining and industrial fields, Mexico agrees to abolish its tariffs on iron and steel within the next 10 years. The tariff-free quota for Japanese automobiles will also be increased by stages, aiming for the abolition of tariffs on automobiles within seven years.
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AFGC Statement Calls for FTAs to Respect Sensitive Products

The 3^rd Meeting of the Asian Farmers' Group for Cooperation (AFGC), held in Manila this year, closed on March 13 with the adoption of a joint statement that calls for the increasing number of FTAs (free trade agreements) being negotiated to pursue improvement of the quality of life of farmers and the coexistence of agriculture in the party countries. The statement also proposes that, in 2004, which is "International Year of Rice", the United Nations and national governments be lobbied to recognize the important role played by the world's rice producers.

The joint statement declares that "FTAs among countries in the Asian monsoon region should seek to improve the quality of life of farmers and consumers", clearly taking the position that the purpose of FTAs should not be to achieve free trade. It adds that FTAs should respect national interests and sensitive products that are easily affected by imports and should seek to ensure the mutual sustainable development of agriculture in the party countries.

In its individual country report, Japan stressed that, to allow the coexistence of agriculture in party countries, FTAs should not pursue trade liberalization alone but must involve agricultural cooperation in areas such as food safety and rural development, to ensure that they are beneficial to farmers.
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Soothing Properties of Forests Confirmed by Scientific Research

On March 10, the Forestry Agency revealed it had obtained scientific evidence of the health-giving and soothing properties of forests. In a forest environment, the level of hormones secreted when one is stressed or anxious falls, making it easier to relax. The Forestry Agency has communicated its findings to prefectural governments around Japan and hopes to use them in seeking a medical explanation of the benefits of "sylvatherapy" and in related research.

The Forestry Agency's research involved 20 healthy men and women. The subjects were asked to take a walk along footpaths in a city area and a forest in Gifu Prefecture and submit to blood tests after their walk.

The tests examined change in the activity level of natural killer cells, which have immune functions, and found that while the cells were activated after a walk in the forest, there was no change after a walk in the city. The level of the stress hormone cortisol in the subjects' blood was also clearly lower after a walk in the forest.

Following the publication of the findings, a spokesman for the Forestry Agency's Planning Division said, "We hope to see people make greater use of forests for the refreshing and recuperative effects they have on mind and body."

March 30 sees the establishment of a sylvatherapy research body including representatives of the forestry industry and medical practitioners, and the launch of a drive to develop sylvatherapy at a practical level.
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Green Tea Catechin Halves Growth of Cancer Cells

A research group at Kyushu University has found that one of the main constituents of the catechin found in green tea has the effect of suppressing the growth of cancer cells by sticking to the surface of the proteins in the cancer cells. Even the tiny amount of catechin absorbed into the blood from drinking 2-3 cups of green tea halves the ability of cancer cells to multiply. The findings are expected to attract widespread attention for their potential application to the development of anticancer agents.

A group led by Associate Professor Hirofumi Tachibana of the Kyushu University Faculty of Agriculture examined the relationship between the substance EGCG (epigallocatechin gallate), which makes up about half of the catechin in green tea, and a migration-related protein found in highly malignant cancer cells. Exposing breast and lung cancer cells to a tiny amount of EGCG roughly halved the growth of cancer cells with this migration-related protein as compared with cancer cells that did not have the protein.

The results show that EGCG acts on the cancer cells by binding, as a marker, to the migration-related protein.

It has been known for some time that green tea contains a substance that slows the growth of cancer cells, but this is the first time that even a small part of the mechanism has been elucidated. The group plans to examine the anticancer effects of EGCG in more detail using animal tests.
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MOF Statistics Show 50% Fall in Beef Imports

The Ministry of Finance's Foreign Trade Statistics for January 2004 (provisional figures) reveal that the volume of beef and chicken imported to Japan has fallen sharply. The fall is attributed to the suspension of imports from Thailand, China and the United States following outbreaks of BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) and avian influenza (fowl plague).

The overall volume of beef import fell to 24,000 tons, half last year's level. Few countries were in a position to take advantage of the slump in shipments from the United States, and Australia, Japan's second largest supplier of beef after the United States, accounted for more than 80% of imports.

The volume of chicken meat imported fell by 30% on last year's level to 32,000 tons. The outbreak of avian influenza came at a time when importers were already reducing import volume to reflect the seasonal fall in demand.

When the outbreak of avian influenza was reported in Thailand, there was initially a movement to replace imports of chicken from that country with imports from China, but following the suspension of imports from China, the movement of chicken meat itself slowed, leading to a fall in import volume
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Educational Farms: Food Production & Agriculture Studies for Whom?

It has been suggested that experience of food production and agriculture in an educational context would help to close the widening gap between the producers and consumers of food, but those responsible for putting the idea into practice are still puzzled as to how to incorporate it into the "general studies" element of the school curriculum and are groping in the dark. One wonders how true a picture our children, those intended to benefit, can be getting.

"My kabutomushi beetle [a large horned beetle of the scarab family] isn't moving. Could you change the batteries?" This story first went around some years ago, but, at the time, most people did not believe a child could be so naïve and dismissed it as apocryphal.

However, the situation is far worse today. Professors at some of the nation's higher educational establishments talk of undergraduates at the faculty of agriculture who cannot tell rice from barley and a number of students at the University of Tokyo who, when asked to draw a picture of a bird, drew one with four legs. If the problem is traced back to its roots, it usually turns out that such people suffered from a serious lack of contact with the natural world in their childhood.

Meanwhile, the number of schools taking up agriculture as a theme for general studies is growing. However, most of the teachers concerned have their work cut out simply to plan a year's worth of lessons, and many have chosen, for the time being, to sow vegetable seeds or grow rice in miniature paddy fields.

At one school in the Tokyo area, the plan was for each grade to grow a number of seasonal vegetables. This came to 30 different kinds of vegetable overall, on a par with a modest kitchen garden. However, the principal concern for the teacher, standing in the middle of the vegetable patch, textbook in hand, is how to maximize the harvest.

What fertilizers to use, how best to manage the garden — the more the teacher focuses on these issues, the further they are drawn away from the original purpose. They know it is not right, but for the children's sake they cannot help being concerned about the size of the harvest.

This is where the misunderstanding lies. In the real world, farmers are engaged in a constant struggle with the weather, with diseases and with insect pests. Surely this is what our children should be learning in agriculture studies? If the vegetables they grow are attacked by disease or by insects, they could investigate why this has happened. They could investigate how farmers overcome such difficulties, why there are always so many vegetables in the shops even in years when the harvest is a poor one… Surely the true purpose of general studies is to learn something of the real world, in this way.

Yet from time to time, the children experience a fresh sense of wonder. They discover that sweet potatoes grow underground and can serve as seed potatoes. They learn that the little grains on the surface of a strawberry are seeds. They find that mandarin oranges occasionally contain pips. So where are the seeds of the daikon [giant white radish]?

It was certainly seeds that they sowed in the vegetable patch, but even when the radish is chopped up small with a kitchen knife, there is no sign of any seeds. So they reason that seeds may form if they allow the radish to grow a little more, and decide not to harvest all the radishes but to leave a few in the ground. Surely this is the kind of living lesson that our children need?

One sad fact is that the JA group still has so little involvement in school farms. One school asked its local JA cooperative for help, only to be asked why JA should get involved in a school farm when a child at the school had a grandfather who was a farmer. This is unfortunate. The greater the geographical area covered by a JA cooperative grows as a result of amalgamation, the more important it is to build links with local schools. This is how to assure the future of food production and agriculture.

The children of the members of the JA Youth Group are now at school age. By getting involved with schools they would be helping their own children. They should take the matter more seriously and show greater consistency in their activities. Food awareness education is as time-consuming as raising children.

(from an editorial in the February 28, 2004 issue of the Nihon Nogyo Shimbun)
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