Food Safety and “Fukushima Foods” in Taiwan
For the assignment this week, I have decided to look into a food safety controversy in Taiwan on the issues of importation of food products from the five prefectures in Japan that had been deemed to be affected by the 3-11 Disasters. For those who are also curious about this issue, I would like to share some easy readings/watchings that may be informative. In Taiwan, this particular issue has geopolitical contexts (stakes in trade agreements and trade partnerships, previous scandals causing collective trauma on food safety, etc.) that transformed it into partisan political debates rather than genuine concerns about public health. Rumors and misinformation have become highly manipulative political instruments that capitalize on shared cultural fears and societal understandings of health and wellbeing, and it is a phenomenon worth more consideration given the current post-truth fake-news information-warfare era we find ourselves in that also seems to be shaping future directions as well.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature.2015.17016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OEj057iI1k&ab_channel=HarvardUniversity
https://www.maff.go.jp/j/export/e_info/pdf/kisei_keii_en.pdf
https://thediplomat.com/2022/02/taiwans-tsai-lifts-import-ban-on-food-from-nuclear-disaster-hit-area-of-japan/
Cover image: https://news.ltn.com.tw/news/focus/breakingnews/3836914
Contributed by H.C. JulianLin on 07/03/2022
