On the meat shelves of a supermarket in Tokyo's Koto Ward, the packages for domestic beef display "inspection complete" seals, a reflection of the new realities of food safety in Japan.
On the meat shelves of a supermarket in Tokyo's Koto Ward, the packages for domestic beef display "inspection complete" seals, a reflection of the new realities of food safety in Japan.
But customers simply walk past the section.
Although the seals are meant to reassure customers that the products have passed radiation checks to confirm their safety, consumers remain wary about the government's standards.
"When I purchase beef, I buy Australian. I don't want my children to take in radioactive materials," said a 41-year-old homemaker with a 3-year-old child.
A 33-year-old mother of a 4-year-old said she only buys meats and vegetables from western Japan.
She is from Sendai, and wants to support people in areas of the Tohoku region that were hit hard by the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake. But the radiation from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power station has given her second thoughts.
"As the government's standards are vague, I cannot trust them," she said.
It's not just Japanese beef that consumers are avoiding. Vegetables, fruits and rice from the Tohoku region are also being given the cold shoulder.
Producers are at a loss on what to do to win back customers.
Bans on shipments have been lifted. Levels of radioactivity detected are lower than the government's provisional permissible standards. And in some cases, no radioactive materials on certain products have been found.
"In conventional years, beef sells well in summer," an official of a different supermarket in Tokyo said. "But this summer, sales of 'Wagyu' (Japanese-produced beef) have declined about 30 percent."
Consumer affairs experts say the government's provisional permissible standards are unconvincing, and the state's efforts to disclose information on radiation safety levels have been insufficient.
Retailers are trying to take matters into their own hands.
Aeon Co., a major supermarket operator, has conducted its own inspections on beef since July. Although the government's provisional permissible standard for cesium is 500 becquerels per kilogram, "the amounts detected in our inspections are only 30 becquerels or less," an Aeon official said.
Daichi wo Mamoru Kai (Group to protect the Earth), a Chiba-based organization that delivers food materials, started selling its "Kodomotachi e no Anshin Yasai Set" (a set of safe vegetables for children) in July at a price of 1,980 yen (about $26), including delivery fees.
The set consists of vegetables only from Hokkaido, Koshinetsu and other regions west of Aichi Prefecture. The organization's employees conduct radiation checks on the products before delivery.
The number of people who joined the group in July and August more than doubled from the same months last year.
The trend to buy products outside the Tohoku region is also apparent for rice.
Rice sales at major supermarket chain Inageya Co., based in Tachikawa, Tokyo, increased 5.8 percent year-on-year in July, while August sales jumped 9.1 percent. Most of that rice was harvested in 2010 or was this year's "hayabamai" from Miyazaki and Kochi prefectures. The hayabamai rice is harvested earlier than other rice.
Consumers are apparently hoarding the rice, fearing possible radiation contamination of later harvests in the Tohoku region.
Kiyokazu Ujiie, assistant professor of food consumption analysis at the graduate school of the University of Tsukuba, interviewed 5,614 married women about rice harvested in Fukushima, Miyagi and Ibaraki prefectures this year. Valid responses were received from 1,760.
More than 50 percent of the respondents from the Tokyo metropolitan area and more than 60 percent in the Kansai region said they would not buy rice from the three prefectures, even if the cesium amount detected was lower than the government's provisional permissible standards.
In fact, about 30 percent in the Tokyo area and more than 40 percent in Kansai said they would not buy rice from the three prefectures even if no cesium was detected.
"Consumers are refraining from buying rice (from certain areas) not only because they have anxieties, but also because they are studying (about radiation contamination) by themselves and making reasonable judgments," said Naoya Sekiya, associate professor of social psychology at Toyo University, who wrote "Fuhyo Higai," (Damage from groundless rumors). "Unless the government sets permissible standards that can be accepted by society and discloses sufficient information on radiation levels of food sold by retailers, it cannot remove the anxieties of the consumers."
Even Fukushima Prefecture's famed peaches cannot escape the consumers' fears.
The prefecture is the second-largest peach producer in Japan. Its main variety Akatsuki is a first-grade peach that has been supplied to the imperial family for 18 straight years.
The peach orchard of Shuichi Tanno, 59, in Date is about 60 kilometers from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant. His late-maturing variety Fukuyoka Bijin has grown in abundance and is awaiting harvest. But Tanno remains down.
In the peak shipping season of mid-August, the peach wholesale price fell below 200 yen per kilogram, less than half the level of normal years.
"The color of the peaches this year was better than those in the past. The volume of harvest was also big. I have grown peaches for 35 years. But I have never seen such low prices," he said.
According to JA Date Mirai, a local agricultural cooperative association, the peach wholesale price in early July when shipments began was 370 yen per kg, only about 10 percent lower than normal.
In those days, shipment restrictions on certain agricultural and livestock products were gradually being lifted, and rumors about the dangers of Tohoku food were subsiding.
In late July, however, beef from cattle that ate radiation-contaminated straw was found to have been distributed to various parts of Japan. Consumers' anxieties over food safety expanded drastically.
Radioactive materials exceeding provisional permissible standards have not been detected in Akatsuki peaches harvested in Date.
"Since the problem of contaminated cattle came to light, consumers do not buy products even if the amount of radioactive materials detected in inspections is extremely small," said Yoshiaki Hagiwara, an executive of JA Date Mirai.
The peach harvest in the Date area ends in mid-September. And in late September, the harvest of Koshihikari brand rice starts in full-scale there. In December, shipments of a local specialty, dried persimmon, called Anpo Gaki, will begin.
Before the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake, the Food Sanitation Law did not contain standards on radiation contamination. Six days after the disaster, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare quickly set the "provisional" standards, based on calculations of the Nuclear Safety Commission in 1998, to regulate shipments of contaminated food.
However, the provisional standards apply only to "emergency situations," like the one in Fuskushima Prefecture in which radioactive materials continue to leak out. What happens to the standards when the crisis ends?
"I don't think it is good to keep the provisional standards as they are," said Mariko Sano, director-general of the secretariat for Shufuren, a consumers' organization.
In late July, the Food Safety Commission compiled a report that will be submitted to the health ministry. However, the contents of the report were vague.
It said, for example, "If a person is exposed to 100 millisieverts or more in his or her lifetime, including the amount of exposure (to radioactive materials) in the air, it could have a negative influence on his or her health."
The health ministry, which has to set permissible standards for each food item in response to the report, is now at a loss on how to divide the 100 millisieverts among the food items.
(This story was written by Hiroaki Kimura, Keiko Nannichi, Nobuya Sawa and Miki Kobayashi.)