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On Tuesday, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano took part in a bazaar in front of the JR Shimbashi Station in Tokyo that featured produce from Iwaki in Fukushima Prefecture. Iwaki is just outside the evacuation perimeter set by the government, and Edano assured shoppers at the bazaar that the food from Iwaki and other Fukushima farms "that are sold in markets are perfectly safe." To prove it he ate some strawberries and tomatoes.
Edano's reassurances recalled a similar stunt carried out by the current prime minister, Naoto Kan, in 1996 when he was the health minister during a food-poisoning outbreak that was blamed on daikon radish sprouts. In order to reassure consumers that the sprouts were in fact safe, Kan ate a bowl of them on TV. The implication is that rumors about food safety often outrun the facts, and the government has little recourse except to offer visual proof that the fear of tainted food is unsubstantiated. Usually, however, it's the government that exacerbated the rumors in the first place.