Taiwan has lifted its 11-year ban on food imports from Fukushima and the four other areas affected by Japan's 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster. That was the word on Tuesday from Cabinet Spokesperson Lo Ping-cheng.
Lo said Taiwan will be holding goods from those areas to higher standards than from other parts of the world. The areas include Fukushima, Gunma, Chiba, Ibaraki and Tochigi. Taiwan will require inspections on imported goods, certificates of origin and radiation inspection certificates for goods from those regions and nearby areas.
Some products such as mushrooms, the meat of wild animals, and foraged vegetables from the five areas as well as other items that cannot be sold in other parts of Japan are still banned.
The import ban was imposed in March 2011 after a massive earthquake and tsunami triggered a meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.
President Tsai Ing-wen addressed the public on Tuesday, saying that Taiwan has protective measures in place to prevent unsafe food from entering the country. These measures include continuous border inspections and requiring origin and radiation inspection certificates from importers. Tsai says that Taiwan's standards for food imports are even more strict than those set by the US, EU, and other international commissions.
In a Facebook post on Tuesday, Premier Su Tseng-chang said that in the years since Japan's 2011 nuclear disaster, an increasing number of countries have resumed importing food from Fukushima. Now that Taiwan is accepting these goods, China is the only country that holds this ban against Japanese goods.
Su says that Taiwan and Japan have supported each other through natural disasters and the COVID-19 pandemic. Taiwan donated more money to Japan after the Fukushima disaster than any country in the world, while Japan donated 4,300,000 AstraZeneca vaccine doses to Taiwan during its vaccine shortage.
Su says there is no scientific basis to question the safety of these Japanese food imports, and expanding trade with Japan could help Taiwan’s bid to join the CPTPP, an international trade bloc of which Japan is a member.