Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Food safety and regulatory change since the ‘mad cow’ in Japan: Science, self-responsibility, and trust

Food safety and regulatory change since the ‘mad cow’ in Japan: Science, self-responsibility, and... The discovery of the first BSE case in Japan in 2001 triggered far-reaching changes in the regulatory framework of food safety. This article focuses on three major institutional developments since that first mad cow, namely the establishment of the Food Safety Commission (2003), the Shokuiku or Food Education program (2005), and the Consumer Affairs Agency (2009). Through a focus on the concept of self-responsibility, the politicized role of science, and the Japanese rhetoric of anzen anshin (safety–peace of mind), this study analyses the political efforts in reinstalling consumer trust. Regulatory changes gradually initiated a risk analysis approach into Japan’s food safety governance, combining consumer education and consumer protection essentials. Focusing on educating the consumer about new roles and responsibilities, the reforms shift the accountability for food risk to the individual, thereby strongly and increasingly relying on the ambiguous concept of anzen anshin. However, I argue that issues such as independence, accountability, and fragmentation in food safety monitoring must be continuously addressed instead of hiding them behind a rhetoric of anzen anshin and calling upon the consumer’s self-responsibility. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Contemporary Japan Taylor & Francis

Food safety and regulatory change since the ‘mad cow’ in Japan: Science, self-responsibility, and trust

Walravens, Tine
Contemporary Japan , Volume 29 (1): 22 – Jan 2, 2017
Download PDF

Food safety and regulatory change since the ‘mad cow’ in Japan: Science, self-responsibility, and trust

Abstract

The discovery of the first BSE case in Japan in 2001 triggered far-reaching changes in the regulatory framework of food safety. This article focuses on three major institutional developments since that first mad cow, namely the establishment of the Food Safety Commission (2003), the Shokuiku or Food Education program (2005), and the Consumer Affairs Agency (2009). Through a focus on the concept of self-responsibility, the politicized role of science, and the Japanese rhetoric of anzen anshin...
Loading next page...
 
/lp/taylor-francis/food-safety-and-regulatory-change-since-the-mad-cow-in-japan-science-MlmTM5cBXW
Publisher
Taylor & Francis
Copyright
© 2016 German Institute for Japanese Studies
ISSN
1869-2737
eISSN
1869-2729
DOI
10.1080/18692729.2017.1256987
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

The discovery of the first BSE case in Japan in 2001 triggered far-reaching changes in the regulatory framework of food safety. This article focuses on three major institutional developments since that first mad cow, namely the establishment of the Food Safety Commission (2003), the Shokuiku or Food Education program (2005), and the Consumer Affairs Agency (2009). Through a focus on the concept of self-responsibility, the politicized role of science, and the Japanese rhetoric of anzen anshin (safety–peace of mind), this study analyses the political efforts in reinstalling consumer trust. Regulatory changes gradually initiated a risk analysis approach into Japan’s food safety governance, combining consumer education and consumer protection essentials. Focusing on educating the consumer about new roles and responsibilities, the reforms shift the accountability for food risk to the individual, thereby strongly and increasingly relying on the ambiguous concept of anzen anshin. However, I argue that issues such as independence, accountability, and fragmentation in food safety monitoring must be continuously addressed instead of hiding them behind a rhetoric of anzen anshin and calling upon the consumer’s self-responsibility.

Journal

Contemporary Japan – Taylor & Francis

Published: Jan 2, 2017

Keywords: Food safety; bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE); risk; self-responsibility; science

References

  • Trust in food in modern and late-modern societies
  • Food safety and consumers: Constructions of choice and risk
  • Gastronationalism: Food traditions and authenticity politics in the European Union
  • Procedural manual. Fourteenth edition
  • Culinary nationalism
  • The media and genetically modified foods: Evidence in support of social amplification of risk
  • Shokuhin anzen monitā ankēto chōsa
  • Prion Expert Committee
  • Risk and responsibility
  • Food with a visible face: Traceability and the public promotion of private governance in the Japanese food system
  • “Self-responsibility” and the nature of the postwar Japanese state: Risk through the looking glass
  • Food for thought
  • Nihon ni okeru BSE risuku hyōka to sābeiransu no aida ni aru gyappu: Sukurīningu tesuto vs shōhisha no gyūniku anzen ni kan suru chishiki [Bridging the gap between BSE risk assessment and consumer perception of the surveillance system in Japan]
  • BSE crisis in Japan: A chronological overview
  • Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) in Japan: How was the ‘blanket testing myth’ created?
  • Food education as food literacy: Privatized and gendered food knowledge in contemporary Japan
  • Nationalism, patriarchy, and moralism: The government-led food reform in contemporary Japan
  • The responsibility or the right to eat well? The food education (shokuiku) campaign launched by the Japanese government
  • ‘The birth of bio-politics’: Michel Foucault’s lecture at the Collège de France on neo-liberal governmentality
  • Result of BSE surveillance
  • The regulatory state and its legitimacy problems
  • Restructuring Japanese food safety governance: Institutional changes and future challenges
  • Shōhishachō no hattatsu to kadai [Inauguration and challenges of the Consumer Affairs Agency]
  • Trust in risk regulation: Cause or consequence of the acceptability of GM food?
  • Statement from Stanley B. Prusiner, M.D. about ‘Mad Cow’ disease in the United States
  • Food pedagogies in Japan. From the implementation of the Basic Law on Food Education to Fukushima
  • Delicious food in a beautiful country: Nationhood and nationalism in discourses on food in contemporary Japan
  • Seven samurai to protect ‘our’ food: The reform of the food safety regulatory system in Japan after the BSE crisis of 2001
  • Social imaginary and dilemmas of policy practice: The food safety arena in Japan