Update III: Radioactive fish caught of the coast of Japan.
Considering the fact that we import fresh seaweed from Japan this should be cause for alarm.
Update II: China to ban food imports from more areas of Japan and reports “harmless” radioactive contamination over the entire country
Update I: Thailand, India both stopped the import of Japanese food products with Thailand only allowing imports if accompanied by a radioactive free certificate.
On 24th of March Xinchuan the Chinese online news paper reported that New Zealand would continue to import food from Japan.
It would do so the article states while both the US and Australia banned the import of Food from Japan.
This means that New Zealand’s government has made a conscious decision to continue the import of food stuffs from Japan while countries such as the US and the equally down under Australia have made a decision not to import food from Japan from as early as 12 days after the initial earthquake and Tsunami which caused the first damage in the Fukishima Nuclear power plant.
While the date might suggest that at the time New Zealand made a decision on the then available data even if that does not explain why Australia decided not to import Japanese food products one would expect that the Agencies responsible for our protection against radioactive fallout would keep both the government and the public informed of the developments in Fukushima and that our government would inform us of decisions made with regards to Japanese food imports.
So I thought that I would check the websites of said agencies and this is what I found:
The National Radiation Laboratory website.
On this site I found a notice dated the 23-3-2011, one day before the Xinchuan article, stating that there is no risk for any contamination to reach New Zealand and that unless information comes from said National Radiation Laboratory it should be considered unreliable.
According to this site they are monitoring the situation and giving the Government advice on how to proceed.
The Government travel advice page.
On the Government website page dedicated to travel advice for New Zealanders going abroad an article advices New Zealanders going to Japan to avoid a circle with a radius of 80 km around the stricken power plant and to avoid visiting the region North East of Tokyo. This is dated 8-4-2011 but it is unclear if that is an automatic update or not.
Rob Fyfe CEO of AirNZ complains about the News about Fukushima’s power plant.
On March 21-3-2011 Rob Fyfe CEO of Air NZ complains about the News articles appearing in the papers and while Rob Fyfe can hardly be called a Nuclear specialist his opinion is the only one aired in the mainstream newspapers. His main complaint: the “News” makes the nuclear disaster appear much bigger than it really is.
To date only the Green party has protested the continued Japanese imports according to a News paper article dated 25-3-2011