(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- A small group of chefs, restaurateurs, and retailers was invited to the Japan Society in New York City last month for a special tasting event. Sitting at well-spaced tables, they watched a demonstration on making soba noodles and heard a short talk on tenugui, or traditional printed cloths.
Each table setting had four small cups of sake and, among other goodies, a bento box with nigiri sushi—one somewhat unorthodox piece had a strip of seared A5 wagyu on top of the rice. The sake, rice, and beef had a notable distinction: They were from Japan's Fukushima prefecture.
This month marks the 11th anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami that killed roughly 16,000 people and caused meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Afterward, exports of food and drink from there and surrounding prefectures were halted or severely curtailed.
Last September, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration cleared the way for many products from the region, chief among them rice, to reenter the U.S. market. The announcement noted an extensive analysis of Japan's control measures and reviewed 10 years' worth of results to determine there's a “very low risk to American consumers from radioactive contaminated foods.” At the dinner, Masao Uchibori, governor of Fukushima prefecture, and Yutaka Arai, vice minister for international affairs for Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries—the event's host—celebrated the new trade opportunities via video.
Naoko Munakata, senior staff of the Trade Promotion Division of the Fukushima Prefectural Government, acknowledged that the import restrictions had put the area in a “difficult situation.” To get those lifted and enhance export prospects, she said, “it is important to deliver more information about the attractiveness of our products and rehabilitate the image of Fukushima from reputational damage.”
Some products are further along the path to image restoration. The sakes, in particular, are a point of pride. Fukushima's breweries, whose sakes are typified by a subtle sweetness compared with those from other regions, have taken the most gold prizes in the Annual Japan Sake Awards eight years in a row.
Importers to the U.S. are starting small, at least in terms of volume. Mitsuwa Marketplace, a Japanese grocery store chain, is taking delivery of 800 kilograms—just under 1,800 pounds—of Koshihikari rice from Yamatsuri. It will be for sale in 11 stores in New Jersey and California. An additional 430kg of rice from the mountainous Aizu region of Fukushima was sent to Japanese grocer Maruichi in Stamford, Conn., and Brookline, Mass. Last fall, Japanese barbecue chain Yakiniku Futago featured A5 wagyu from the region in its New York location.
The rollout's deliberate pace makes sense to Libba Letton, president of food and beverage public relations for the Austin-based Hahn Agency. “I worked for Whole Foods when this happened,” she says of the 2011 disaster, “and you can imagine Whole Foods customers. They were demanding that I personally guarantee that no fish they were going to eat was going to come from Fukushima.”
More than a decade later, Letton thinks the average consumer is unlikely to remember much. In fact, talking up governmental safety standards, however stringent, may defeat the purpose and simply remind people that it happened in the first place.
This is doubly true in the current environment, where the same set of facts leads certain segments of the public to opposing conclusions. “When you have people who are arguing against vaccines,” Letton says, “you're not going to have people who are reasonable about radiation.”
“A spider would come in on a bunch of bananas,” she continues, “and someone would post about it on social media, and half of the people would be like, ‘I can't believe you have spiders on your bananas.' And then the other half would come in and go, ‘Thank God the spiders are still alive on your bananas. That means you're not using pesticides.'”
Bon Yagi, owner of 10 New York restaurants and bars, such as the downtown favorite Sake Bar Decibel, attended the event. He says the sakes are customer favorites—the biggest obstacle to getting them now is run-of-the-mill supply chain issues—and plans to feature the rice in his dishes.
He trusts the testing—but also his sense of taste. The flavor of the rice, Yagi says, “reminded me of when I was a kid in Japan. It was wonderful.”
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