2021.10.12

     In the last class, we watched the movie "Meatrix" which tells the risk of the meat produced in America. As many students believe that Japan is safer than America, we researched and discussed Japanese food scandals in today's class.

     Mr.Paterson introduced us to five famous incidents that took place in our country, media always report food scandals passionately in Japan. 

【Shiroi Koibito】 

The first incident was that Coliform bacteria and Staphylococcus aureus, which cause food poisoning, were detected in ice cream and Baumkuchen manufactured at the head office factory, and it was revealed that some of "Shiroi Koibito" had been tampered with for a month longer. The company was aware of these facts in June-July but was hiding them. “Shiroi Koibito” is one of my favorite products to buy as a souvenir so it was shocking to hear this news.

【Snow Brand Milk】

     In 2003, it was widely reported that the menus of dishes offered at restaurants of multiple hotels used ingredients different from the displayed ingredients and production areas. Hankyu Hotel’s fraud was discovered and became a social problem. I remember watching this news when I was a little child. Japanese people are quite sensitive about their food security.

     “Snow Brand Milk” had caused 14,780 unprecedented food poisoning. A three-hour power outage occurred at the production facility of the Snow Brand Daiki Factory in Hokkaido due to the fall of an icicle, and the skim milk in the tank at the factory stayed for about four hours while being warmed to 20 degrees or higher. During this period, the pathogenic Staphylococcus aureus proliferated, and a toxin (enterotoxin A) was generated in the skim milk powder produced. However, the company shipped it normally to avoid damage. Meet Hop bankrupted because the number of fraud cases was discovered including beef mince camouflage cases in 2007.

What scares me the most about this incident is that the product is still provided daily for school lunches at public elementary schools.

【Others】

     Secondly, we learned about World System Theory. Realism and Liberalism are the two major theories in international politics. Realism is the pessimistic view of the world while Liberalism is quite optimistic. World System Theory was made by Emmanuel Wallerstein. It divided 197 countries into 3 groups which are Cove(high power + rich), Somi Peritory(middle power), Periphery(low power + poor). It takes about 17 years until the new technology at that time(steel, steam, electricity, foil, and internet) is normalized around the world. The cove is always the one to develop these as they can pay high development costs and have a good environment. Somi Peritory starts to introduce these and eventually spread to Peritory. I can imagine this as I have experience in living in cove countries such as US and Japan, and Somi peritory/peritory country like Thailand. Cove countries don't want other countries to be the core as their power can weaken so it is difficult to move up from Somi Peritory and Peritory although the member countries sometimes exchange. The exception is Japan. After WWII Japan had the possibility of becoming communist so the US allowed Japan to join the Cove countries.

     Today's class was shocking as I learned that the food in Japan isn't always safe like people believe and that the disparity of the countries would continue to be wider.