AR-News: (J(Japan) POINT OF VIEW/consumers can better weigh food risk

[Animalara2003 at aol.com]

asahi.com
June 12,2004
It is important for consumers to acquire enough knowledge to make good, 
level-headed assessments of the risks various foods pose to their health without 
being misled by media reports. 
In the past few years, Japan has been hit by a series of food scares and 
food-safety scandals, including the outbreaks of bovine spongiform encephalopathy 
(BSE) and bird flu, revelations about large amounts of residual pesticides in 
vegetables imported from China and various food mislabeling scandals. 
These problems are all part of the evils of today's efficiency-oriented 
system for mass-producing and mass-consuming foods as if they were industrial 
goods. These episodes have naturally made Japanese consumers quite uneasy about the 
safety of foods they consume. 
But many consumers are surprisingly ignorant about food safety issues. 
When BSE makes headlines, they stop eating beef. When bird flu makes a splash 
on front pages, they avoid buying chicken and eggs. Consumers' response to 
such news, however, is mostly temporary, and they quickly forget the problems. 
Japanese consumers' concern is often directed only at matters reported in the 
media but not at real issues behind the news. 
No case of bird flu infection in humans from eating chicken or eggs has been 
reported in the world. 
Still, many people in Japan are currently feeling ill at ease about eating 
eggs or chicken. 
What these people should know is that chickens are grown in very poor 
conditions in many of today's chicken farms, often in crowded, windowless poultry 
houses. 
And some scientific studies have found that chickens that lay eggs under 
these stressful circumstances often have a disease in such organs as the larynx, 
the ovary, the liver and the air sac. It makes little sense to fret only about 
bird flu while turning a blind eye to this and other serious problems with 
chicken farming. 
BSE also represents only an extremely small health risk for Japanese 
consumers, who don't eat such dangerous parts as the brain or the eye. Moreover, 
unlike Britain, which started a serious effort to prevent the spread of the disease 
to humans only after more than 160,000 cows had become infected, Japan took 
steps to contain the disease immediately after the first case was discovered. 
Rather than worrying about BSE, Japanese consumers should be more concerned 
about the widespread use of synthetic hormones for growth promotion by American 
cattle growers as well as the abuse of antibiotics in the livestock industry, 
which is causing proliferation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. 


full story:
http://www.asahi.com/english/opinion/TKY200406120090.html  

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