All Nippon Airways serves food from Fukushima in Taste of Japan promotion

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      For those who haven't forgotten the catastrophic March 2011 nuclear accident in Fukushima, Japan, the thought of munching on peaches from the area isn't very appealing. But this fruit along with tomatoes, beef, and rice wine from Fukushima is being served on All Nippon Airways flights over the next three months, according to a local newspaper report.

      It's part of the airline's "Taste of Japan" campaign.

      Meanwhile, the Japanese government has been trying to encourage people to eat food from Fukushima, even though a significant portion of the country's population still worries about contamination levels.

      To further this goal, the government just brought Prince William to the town of Koriyama in Fukushima, which is 55 kilometres from the crippled power plant. 

      There, the man second in line to the British throne dined with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on food featuring ingredients from local producers.

      Earlier this year, the Japan Times reported on a study of nine people living 14 to 38 kilometres north of the Fukushima No. 1 power plant.

      The research subjects, between the ages of 60 to 74, had a sharp decline in radioactive cesium-137 levels when they stopped eating homegrown vegetables and wild game from the Fukushima area.

      Masaharu Tsubokura, a doctor at the University of Tokyo's Institute of Medical Science, led the research project. It revealed that cesium-137 levels fell by half within three months and then dropped below a third in six months, according to the Japan Times.

      Abe has claimed that the radiation problem in Fukushima is "under control", which helped his country secure International Olympic Committee approval to host the 2020 Summer Games in Tokyo. The Straight subsequently published research indicating that about 800 people around the world would contract cancer from radiation-laced Fukushima fish that had been eaten by October 2013.

      “The potential numbers could be two orders of magnitude [100 times] higher than your numbers,” Daniel Hirsch, a nuclear-policy lecturer at the University of California at Santa Cruz, told the Straight at the time. “Hundreds of cancers are nothing to sneeze at, and it is a fraction of what I suspect the total will be.”

      A recent article in the scientific journal Nature, however, claimed that "few people are likely to have eaten food that exceeded strict Japanese limits on radioactive contamination".

      Citing research by environmental scientist Stefan Merz at the Vienna University of Technology, Nature writer Elizabeth Gibney reported last week that 3.3 percent of food had "above-limit contamination" from the Fukushima region, but that had fallen to 0.6 percent by 2014.

      She noted that there have been "solidarity supermarkets" arise that only sell produce from Fukushima, with the profits reportedly donated to help people in the area.

      Comments

      4 Comments

      Fuku Muta

      Mar 1, 2015 at 2:31pm

      Where are the test results for the exact levels of radioactive isotopes that surely reside in the food from Fukushima? We are told the food is "safe" lol. The Fuku food is supposedly "below acceptable limits" of radioactive contamination but the tests don't even report on alpha radiation or specific radioactive isotopes besides cesium.
      Exactly how much cesium is in the rice? How much plutonium is in the fish?
      Strontium? Polonium? Iodine? Cobalt? Silver? Americium? Sulfur? Tritium?
      Fukushima is a massive lie that is already causing cancers and birth defects. Eat the radioactive food at your own peril.

      Wierd Al

      Mar 2, 2015 at 4:53pm

      Fuku is correct.
      Fukushima is the greatest unmitigated disaster in mankinds history.
      Chernobyl on steroids. Pacific Ocean on life support.
      A nation dealt a punnishing blow that will manifester for centuries.
      It cannot be stopped or cleaned up and will continue to pour radionuclides into this one Earth environment till hell freezes over.
      The potential damage to all lifes genome, and the cancers that will be a direct result of Fukushima, are infinite.
      The only thing worse is the active suppression of information pertaining to the largest nuclear radiation release ever.
      Thats the ocean we are talking about.

      BTW, did you hear about all the starfish, seals, anchovies, polar bears, sea otters, and the rest of the creatures dying lately?

      WTFU! The Northern Hemispere got nuked, is still getting nuked.

      Day 1452

      Your eating it...

      cCharlie

      Mar 3, 2015 at 2:26am

      That the world hasnt addressed this issue shows that they care nothing for the people, only themselves and there imagined power. The Japanese people are a lost people now thanks to there leaders.

      G.R.L. Cowan

      Mar 6, 2015 at 9:16am

      In August of last year they had the 19th Pacific Basin Nuclear Conference in Vancouver. Pacific fish was served. I wasn't there, but asked my informant how it was. "The fish was OK. It wasn't great, but that wasn't the point" was the answer.