Brussels, 21/02/2014 (Agence Europe) - EU restrictions on imports of food and feed from the Fukushima region of Japan that were introduced after the nuclear disaster of 2011 will remain in place, but other restrictions on food and feed imports from Japan will be changed. On Friday 21 February, EU member states' experts on the standing committee on the food chain and animal health (SCoFCAH) endorsed a proposal from the European Commission as part of the regular review of measures introduced by the EU to reduce health risks in the food chain.
In four regions of Japan (Shizuoka, Yamanashi, Niigata and Aomori), restrictions will remain in place for the import of mushrooms, and restrictions have been introduced in three newly added regions (Nagano, Akita and Yamagata) for mushrooms and other edible wild plants.
The restrictions on imports from Tokyo and Kanagawa have been removed and the restrictions on imports from seven other regions (Gunma, Ibaraki, Tochigi, Miyagi, Saitama, Iwate and Chiba) have been relaxed in that the monitoring of radioactivity levels will continue at a reduced level.
The changes are being made in line with the results of tests on some 85,000 samples of products during the third growing seasons since the nuclear disaster.
Once adopted by the Commission, the measures will be published at the end of March 2014 and come into force on 1 April. The measures will be reviewed in March 2015, based on the results of samples collected in the 2014 growing season. (AN/transl.fl)