The Japanese green tea industry and hundreds of green tea growers around Japan are facing a crisis. Japan’s government has banned green tea leaves from four different prefectures from being sold. However, green tea leaves tested from the Shizuoka prefecture, hundreds of miles away from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and presumably far away from possible radiation contamination has tested positive for radioactive cesium. The amounts detected were above the levels deemed safe by the Japanese government.
Shizuoka is Japan’s most productive and famous green tea growing region, with many hillsides covered with green tea bushes. 5 green tea processing plants in the Warashina area of Shizuoka have been asked by the government to stop shipments of their green tea products.
Even without the radioactive cesium findings in Shizuoka, the country’s green tea industry was facing tough times. Dramatically decreasing demand thanks to the nuclear crisis and radiation concerns were already causing business to tumble. With the new radiation findings, the green tea industry is in a state of chaos.
Farmers are angry that the nuclear crisis so far away from them is now affecting their business. In addition, farmers have said that they expect problems from natural disasters, but not from man-made problems like the nuclear crisis.
Many farmers are now worried that their business may never recover. Experts say that the ongoing radiation concerns could very well have a long-term impact on the green tea industry.
Health conscious consumers around the world enjoy green tea not only for the taste but for the myriad of health benefits. Recent studies have shown that green tea and componenets of green tea can be beneficial for weight loss, cancer, heart disease, diabetes and many other ailments and conditions.
Consumers around the world look to Japan for the finest green tea products, including the famed powdered green tea called Matcha. Now, consumers are looking to other countries to fulfill their green tea needs, including China and Southeast Asian countries.
Japanese farmers say that the banning of their products are unfair, citing the fact that people do not consume green tea leaves whole, only a small amount is used in tea and it is diluted in water. Whereas the banning of products like milk and spinach is different, where people consume the entirety of those products.
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So they feel that the tea is ‘OK” because after it is ground up people will only get a ‘small’ amount of radioactive particles?
This is where the problem for all food products is going to lie.. Soon that will be the criteria for shipping all products from Japan, and then the contamination that will be spread around the world.. Not if radiation is ‘IN’ the food, but in cutting it down to as little radiation as possible and then deeming it “safe”..
We are all going to suffer.. Because the need and the greed of people who grow the worlds food, and end up with contaminated products, will just decide how much “they deem” is safe for others to consume based on their profit margins..
We are not going to be safe.. And thats a fact history of other disasters has proven out..
japan’s nuclear disaster is the worlds disaster now~!
Mary, there is always going to be radiation in the food (or anything) naturally just from the cosmic radiation it receives. It is the same radiation and no more “natural” or “unnatural” aside from the level that is present. Of course people must draw lines to deem what is “safe” or we’d all be dying of starvation out of panic. Those lines are drawn because some people are trying to make their best guesses as to what we can allow so that people don’t become ill or develop problems down the road. But it’s a tough line to draw because we don’t have very many incidents like this from which we can draw data from.
Of course this is a terrible tragedy, and no one is happy that it happened, but we can’t just wail our hands and scream bloody murder. We’ve got to take it as something we can learn from and take cautious and reasonable steps forward.
We are never fully safe, and that is something we learn from the first time we fall down and hurt ourselves as a toddler. We all face risks everyday, and, when we have the luxury of doing so, we’ve got to choose which ones we think are acceptable. No one is cramming green tea down your throat in this case, so if you are seriously concerned about it, don’t drink what’s being shipped out to you. Some people may still choose to drink it and that is their own decision. In which case, pray for them that these regulations are sufficient. These farmers have nothing else but their green tea to sell, so their lives REALLY are impacted by this tragedy. You can’t blame them for wishing it weren’t so.
FYI, I currently live in Fujieda City, Shizuoka, and I can tell you from over here, the green tea farmers are pretty much humble, everyday sort of folk, not the fat cat tycoons you’ve dreamt up in your mind. Yes, of course those companies do have executives who probably are a LITTLE more like that, but there’s a lot more lives than that involved here.
Troy,
Just a word of thanks for your thoughtful response. I have mixed feelings on the topic. I’m an American married into a green tea farming family in western Shizuoka around the Hamamatsu area. They are incredibly humble people who live in a 200 year old wood home. The home looks like it’ll collapse at the slightest earthquake and has an outhouse for the toilet rather than plumbing because of its age. They have no young family members to help out on the farm which is about an acre so the people hand picking leaves are 60, 70, and 80 year old women, permanently bent from a life of labor so that their faces are pointed at their feet. I worry about them a great deal now and yet also feel nervous about drinking their tea. I think that if they believed their leaves to be dangerous, they would retire and close the farm. From my experience in Shizuoka prefecture, this humble life and sincere concern about the greater good (more than for themselves) is common. And for this reason, the disaster is all the more heartbreaking.
It occurs to me that it would be foolish, though, to change what is considered “acceptable limits of radiation” (even if they are right about dilution). The reason for this is that it leaves a stain of distrust on people unfamiliar with the topic. That can be seen in comments like Mary’s. In the long term, it’ll be much harder to recover their reputation than if they had accepted and supported strict guidelines.