TOKYO, Sept. 8 — Japan’s agriculture ministry will boost financial assistance to help food producers, who use pesticides and food additives that are not regulated in foreign markets, to prove their products are safe through their own private risk assessment.
The agriculture ministry is now seeking to triple the budget to 600 million yen in the fiscal year beginning next April.
It aims to accelerate Japanese food exporters’ registration for their pesticides and food additives overseas so that they have access to foreign markets.
The budget request comes as Japan has set a target to boost the annual value of agricultural exports to 1 trillion yen by 2020.
Japanese food and pesticide manufacturers have faced challenges when there is no regulation for their products in foreign markets, because they must attest that their products meet the applicable requirements of food safety through their own private assessment.
For instance, blue gardenia and yellow gardenia are widely used as food additives in Japan to make food and beverage look bright and more appealing. But those food additives are not used in the United States and Europe, and quite often there is no regulation.
Therefore, Japanese producers who use blue gardenia and yellow gardenia effectively have no access to the U.S. and European markets, unless they obtain regulatory approval through their costly private risk assessment.
The same thing goes with pesticides.
In many cases, countries apply stricter measures on minimum food residue levels for pesticides if they have no regulation on particular pesticides.