The European Union has decided to ease restrictions imposed on food and feed imports from 11 Japanese prefectures following the Fukushima nuclear accident.
Experts meeting in the Standing Committee on the Food Chain and Animal Health (SCoFCAH) on Monday endorsed a European Commission proposal to revise rules on import conditions of food and feed originating from Japan.
Based on over 40,000 samples of products harvested in the second growing season after the nuclear accident, the restrictive measures in place have been eased for the prefectures of Yamanashi, Shizuoka, Gunma, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Miyagi, Saitama, Tokyo, Iwate, Chiba and Kanagawa. An interim review will be held before March 31, 2013 for crops where samples of products for the second growing season (March-November) were not available in time for this review.
However, existing restrictions for food and feed imports coming from the Fukushima prefecture, where the accident occurred, will continue. The existing measures applying to all food and feed from Fukushima, with the exception of alcoholic beverages, will be maintained until March 31, 2014.
In March this year, ScoFCAH had decided that the imported material from these prefectures would be subject to verification if it was within safety levels for the presence of cesium-134 and cesium-137 before leaving Japan as well as being subject to random testing upon arrival in the EU until October 31.
For the control at import, a reduction of the frequency of controls to five percent will apply. Based on the monitoring results from the 2013 growing season, these measures will be reviewed shortly before March 31, 2014.
The measures will come into force on November 1 after they are published at the end of this month, the European Commission said in a press release.
The 27-nation bloc originally imposed import restrictions on food and feed products from Japan's radiation-contaminated areas on March 24, 2011 concerned over high-level of contamination due to radiation leak from the quake-ruptured Fukushima nuclear power plant.
The EU has been relaxing import restrictions from Japanese prefectures based on periodic review since then, regarding any new releases of the hazardous matter to the environment.
The European Commission had underlined that for a number of reasons, food safety risks from the nuclear accident in Japan are considerably low in the EU. This is confirmed by the controls carried out by Member-States on food and feed at import. Nevertheless, the Commission remains vigilant and has been active in ensuring that food and feed entering the EU from Japan is safe.
Feed and food products from 36 other Japanese regions are already exempted from testing, but must be accompanied by a declaration stating the prefecture of origin, and also remain subject to random testing at the point of entry into the EU.
EU imports from Japan in 2011 represented 1.9 percent of the total EU agri-food imports.
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