What should be done about food safety?

In our society, food safety problem has caused us a great anxiety. For example, agricultural product exported by China has been shed light on for the last decade because of residual pesticides. Fujiya expired food case/meat hope false-labeling scandal hit our society. Some people point out that the current inspection is too lenient and much more strict inspection is needed. It’s true. Now, I’d like to add two solutions here to tackle with food safety.

First, establishment of evaluation/ranking system. I believe, audit body formed by media/authorities as watchdog is effective. Companies are significantly sensitive to media coverage. Therefore, they will make strong efforts to earn good reputation from public. For example, an international environmental organization – Greenpeace has its own ranking system. This is environmental version. But I believe that this idea can be applied to food safety in stead. The first priority of companies is to make a profit. It has become clear that through earning good reputation, we can make more profit. In other words, good reputation plays vital role for making profit. Nowadays, handling environmental sustainability has been a significant impact on corporate sustainability.

Second, time to increase self-sufficient rate.
Japan’s food self-sufficient rate is around 40%. We heavily rely on import of agricultural product. The main partner nations are U.S, China, Australia, Canada and Thai land. Especially, import vegetable contaminated with pesticides from China is hot potato in our society. To avoid this kind of problem, I believe that setting up agriculture company/group farmer is effective through increasing self-sufficient rate. Agriculture has been considered as new type of business. It attracts young people as changing job and the retired senior people as the second job opportunity. We should consider that food safety problem enhances the trend of increasing self-sufficient rate.

In conclusion, it’s high time to tackle with food safety problem. I believe evaluation system and increasing self-sufficient rate are realistic solution.