Photo shows the facade of the European Union Council building in Brussels. — Reuters photo
BRUSSELS: The European Union (EU) is considering lifting an import restriction on rice produced in nuclear disaster-hit Fukushima Prefecture as well as wild vegetables and marine products from Japan, informed sources said Sunday, Japan’s Jiji Press reported.
At present, the EU requires the submission of certificates of radiation inspections for exporters of some food products from 13 prefectures in the eastern half of the Japanese archipelago.
But the European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, has drafted import regulation reform plans calling for scrapping the requirement for rice from Fukushima, which hosts Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings Inc’s crippled Fukushima number one nuclear power plant, the sources said.
The commission also proposes removing the regulation for some kinds of seafood, such as shrimp, crab, octopus, yellowtail, red sea bream and bluefin tuna, from the seven prefectures of Fukushima, Miyagi, Gunma, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Chiba and Iwate, and certain wild vegetables from seven prefectures including Akita, Nagano and Yamagata.
Meanwhile, the certificates obligation will remain in place for food imports from Yamanashi, Niigata and Shizuoka prefectures.
The deregulation will be formally decided as early as this autumn, the sources said. – Bernama