Fear of radioactive contamination from the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant is driving down prices of food products from areas near the plant, piling on the misery for producers struggling to recover from the Great East Japan Earthquake.
Fear of radioactive contamination from the stricken Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant is driving down prices of food products from areas near the plant, piling on the misery for producers struggling to recover from the Great East Japan Earthquake.
Representatives from Minami-Soma, Fukushima Prefecture, told Michihiko Kano, the minister of agriculture, forestry and fisheries, on Friday that fear among consumers was the latest in the series of disasters to hit them.
"We have been hit four times: the earthquake, tsunami, nuclear accidents and now these harmful rumors," one representative said.
Part of Minami-Soma is in the 30 km evacuation zone around the Fukushima plant. Last month, the government ordered a halt to shipments of leafy vegetables produced in Fukushima Prefecture and of milk from some areas in the prefecture after detecting traces of radioactivity. Minami-Soma has decided not to plant rice this year.
But consumers' fear of radiation is affecting a wide range of other products that the government has not placed shipment restrictions on.
The price of strawberries, a specialty of the prefecture, has halved. The agriculture ministry says beef from the prefecture has been returned and even lumber shipments have been cancelled.
At the Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market, the price of lettuce produced in Ibaraki Prefecture dropped to 20-40 percent of the same period last year in late March. The government has not imposed any restrictions on lettuce from the prefecture.
Cabbages, produced mainly in Aichi and Kanagawa prefectures, were trading at 69 percent of their yearly average on Thursday.
Marine products are also suffering. The discovery earlier this month of radioactivity exceeding the interim legal limit in "ikanago" (sand lances) caught off Ibaraki Prefecture came as a major blow. Prices of ikanago caught off Chiba Prefecture have been hard hit, too.
On Friday, 10 boats from two Ibaraki ports resumed fishing, almost a month after the earthquake struck.
Akihiko Koizumi, a 67-year-old fisherman from Hitachi said: "If things don't change, I will earn nothing. To make living, though, I have to go fishing, even if the fish is sold dirt cheap."
Loligo squid and angerfish that he caught on Friday went for 70 percent of its normal price. Horse mackerel fetched about 10 yen a kilogram, compared with 150 to 200 yen before the earthquake.
At Hirakata Port in Kita-Ibaraki, Ibaraki Prefecture, fish were being traded at 60-70 percent of their normal price before eventual sale at the Metropolitan Central Wholesale Market.
Kazuhisa Suzuki, a local fisheries cooperative official, said: "I just pray they will fetch high prices."
Prime Minister Naoto Kan tried to bolster public confidence in the stricken area's produce Friday by eating strawberries and cucumbers brought by the Fukushima prefectural branch of the National Federation of Agricultural Cooperative Associations in front of the media.
The scene recalled another performance in 1996, when Kan, then health minister, ate "kaiware daikon" (white radish sprouts) to reassure the public that the product was not contaminated with E. coli 0157.
Fear of radiation appears to be affecting non-food related activity. When the mayor of Kawasaki, a city to the southwest of Tokyo, announced April 8 that he planned to help dispose of debris from disaster-stricken areas, he received about 4,000 letters, e-mails and phone calls complaining about the decision. Many said it would be dangerous to burn radioactive garbage.
The city posted a Q&A column on its website explaining that it had no intention of accepting unsafe garbage and that there was no plan to process material that had been contaminated with radiation.
A growing number of callers to the city office are now in support of the initiative, a city official said. The official quoted one caller saying: "It is not right for us to have benefited from electricity (from the Fukushima plant) and then complain about taking the garbage."
There are even hearsay reports of children from Fukushima Prefecture being discriminated against. A city assembly member in Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture, said a woman in her 70s and her son had reported that relatives from Fukushima Prefecture had dropped a plan to evacuate to the area after their children were excluded from games with other children in a park in Funabashi after saying where they came from.
The local board of education issued an instruction on March 28 to all its elementary and junior high schools asking for considerate treatment of all evacuee children and careful use of language in announcements regarding the new arrivals.