Global food scare widens from Japan nuclear plant

TOKYO: countries around the world shunned food imports from Japan on Thursday as the radioactive steam leaked from a disaster has struck a nuclear power plant tender nerves in Tokyo.
The grim toll of dead and missing from the monster earthquake and tsunami of Japan March 11 exceeded 26,000, while hundreds of thousands remained huddled in evacuation shelters, and fears grew in the megalopolis of Tokyo safe water.
Damage to the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster of tectonic and a series of explosions has fueled global concern.
The United States and Hong Kong have already limited Japanese food, and France wants the EU to do likewise.
Russia ordered a halt food imports from four prefectures - Fukushima, Gunma, Ibaraki and Tochigi - struck near the plant 250 km (155 miles) north of Tokyo.
Moscow has also quarantined a Panamanian-flagged freighter that had passed near the plant and put its 19 crew members under medical supervision after the detection of radiation levels three times the norm in the engine room.
Australia has banned the production of the region, including algae and shellfish, milk, dairy products, fruits and vegetables.
He said, however, that Japanese food already on store shelves was safe, as he had shipped before the earthquake, and that "the risk of Australian consumers being exposed to radionuclides in food is imported from Japan negligible ".
Singapore has also suspended imports of milk products and other foods from the four prefectures and even Canada implement import controls on most products quartet.
The Philippines has banned imports of Japanese chocolate.
"Issues of food security is an added dimension of urgency," said three UN agencies in a joint statement issued in Geneva, promising that they were "committed to mobilize their knowledge and expertise" to help Japan.
Japan has been taking the right actions, said the International Atomic Energy Agency, World Health Organization and Food and Agriculture.
"Monitoring food is implemented, measurements of radioactivity in food are underway and the results are communicated to the public."
Besides Tokyo, urban sprawl over 30 million people, of strong aftershocks in the morning and night, served as uncomfortable reminders that the capital of Japan itself is considered decades overdue for a mega Earthquake.
The anxiety was compounded by the revelation of the Tokyo government on Wednesday that the radioactive iodine in drinking water was more than twice the level deemed safe for children, while remaining within the trusted adult.
The news triggered a run on bottled water in stores and everywhere in the city of vending machines, while the government of Tokyo began giving the families of three 550-ml (18.5 oz) bottles water per child.
A measure of Thursday was in the safe zone again for infants, authorities said, but it was not enough to calm all parents of young children.
"I do not want to panic," Kazuko Hara, 39, told AFP she collected her allotted three bottles of water in the district of Tokyo Bunkyo.
"I'm going to use bottled water for now. If we fail, I will use tap water. Experts say it's OK. But when you see people buying bottled water in stores and empty store shelves, which makes worrying again. "
The Government of Japan also stopped deliveries of raw milk and vegetables Fukushima and three neighboring prefectures, and intensified monitoring of radiation to another six years, covering an area that borders Tokyo.
The Ministry of Health has detected 82,000 becquerels of radioactive cesium - 164 times the safe limit - in kukitachina green vegetables, and high levels in 10 other vegetables, including cabbage and turnips.
A source of radiation - the Fukushima plant located on the Pacific coast - white smoke could be seen emanating from four of six reactors.
Fire trucks again pointed their jets of water high pressure reactor number three, a day after a plume of black smoke forced workers to evacuate it, in their efforts to prevent a complete collapse that would result in more radiation.
Highlighting the risks taken by the rescue team, three workers were exposed to high radiation - at least 170 mSv.
Two of them were sent to hospital after they stepped into a puddle of water that reaches the skin on the legs despite their radiation suits.
Engineers have now linked up to an external power supply to all six reactors and are testing the system components and equipment in an effort to restart soon the systems affected by the tsunami cooling and stabilizing reactors.
On Thursday they have partially restored power to the reactor control room number one.
The grim statistics from Japan's worst postwar disaster kept rising, with 9,737 confirmed dead and 16,423 missing now from the national police. - (AFP)