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Recalibrating risk through media: Two cases of intentional food poisoning in Japan
Abstract
In 2008, a case of intentional food poisoning involving Chinese imported dumplings resulted in mass panic in Japan. Within a context of sensitive bilateral relations and Japanese agriculture in decline, the media were key to the enhanced risk perception among the public. To shed light on the concrete ways of risk recalibration by the media, the article compares the incident’s coverage to a strikingly similar event in 2014 involving domestic produce. Drawing on the social amplification of risk framework, a qualitative content analysis shows how the specific discursive construction of both incidents led to two different levels of risk, primarily through the framing of the incidents by references to former experiences and symbolic connotations. At the intersection of food, media and risk, the article also contributes to the understanding of perceptions of domestic as opposed to foreign or imported risks, and those in power to label these as such.
... That is, strategies that are quite beyond ordinary citizens' capabilities. Among these postmodern challenges, food safety is a major source for the perception of high risk (Guo, 2005;Walravens, 2019;Zhang and Zhao, 2008). ...
Resourceful parents and grandparents in Shanghai go a long way in search of safe and healthy food for the children of their families. From an ethnographical perspective, this article delves into the risk of eating in everyday family life in urban China, and it investigates the complexity of navigating the urban food market and trusting advice from Internet sources, mommy groups, friends, and family members in order to avoid often incomprehensible health risks posed by polluted or chemically treated foods. It describes how family caregivers feel a moral obligation of doing their best to handle food risks in everyday life, and how they exchange practical knowledge in private networks. It argues that food risks are tackled with individual strategies aiming towards a feeling of peace of mind ( fangxin), and that buying, preparing, and eating safe food is a moral issue within the family.
In Brussels in February 1840, Piotr Kopczynski published a series of
three newspaper articles that caused a commotion because they
took seriously the rumors about bread that caused gastrointestinal
problems. Journalists, city administrators, doctors, chemists, bakers,
and two health boards reacted to the articles, which led to a
controversy that lasted a couple of months. The paper analyzes
this episode, paying meticulous attention to the views and doings
of all actors. It emphasizes the need to know the chronology of food
fears to learn when, how, and why people and institutions react.
The Kopczynski affair allows to suggest the phases of food fears,
that may go beyond time and place. Sources of the paper include
reports, magazines, treatises, and especially newspapers, which are
carefully read
Zusammenfassung
Konzepte über Food Defense (Lebensmittel-Produktschutz) sollen Lebensmittel vor mutwilligen Kontaminationen schützen. Aufgrund von Zertifizierungsanforderungen oder Exportregularien besteht auch ohne nationale oder europäische Rechtsvorgaben zu Food Defense für viele deutsche Lebensmittelunternehmen die Notwendigkeit zur Einführung eines entsprechenden Konzepts. Dennoch wird das Thema in der Lebensmittelwirtschaft und -kontrolle bislang nicht angemessen beachtet. Eine Sensibilisierung der Verantwortlichen erscheint dringend erforderlich. Hilfsmittel, die in diesem Kontext einfach anzuwenden sind und Unternehmen bei der Einführung eines Food Defense-Konzepts unterstützen, sind kaum vorhanden. Die aktuell entwickelte „Checkliste Food Defense“ stellt ein einfaches und praktisches Hilfsmittel dar. Sie gewährt einen Überblick über den Stand der Präventionsmaßnahmen im Betrieb, gibt Anregungen für einen Food Defense-Maßnahmenplan und ist frei abrufbar unter https://food-defense.ua-bw.de .
Since the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, the contamination of food poses serious problems to consumers, producers and policy makers in Japan. This essay shows how different actors create differing spatializations of food risks in order to make food risks manageable in everyday consumption practices, food monitoring and risk communication. Starting out from the observation that risk communication about contaminated food differs from risk communication after the food scandal involving Chinese dumplings (gyōza) in 2008, I follow the question of how the nuclear crisis has challenged older boundaries between “safe” and “hazardous” places of origin. Accordingly, the essay deals with discourse on Japan’s food self-sufficiency-ratio, agricultural trade policy and food nationalism. My paper is based on insights from a recent qualitative consumer survey I conducted in the summer of 2011, and qualitative interviews I carried out in February 2012 in Japan.
The nature of food risk in Japan has undergone a qualitative change in recent years. This article synthesises insights from psychology, economics, and political science into an interdisciplinary risk approach to show how international relations impact consumer decisions in Japan by outlining how food risks are constructed and framed within existing narrative frameworks. To this end, the article employs two case studies: the gyōza incident in 2008, when poisoned dumplings imported from China caused ten people to fall ill, and contaminated beef incident in 2011, in which five people died and dozens more were hospitalised after consuming raw beef tainted due to industrial negligence. These cases are analysed in the context of Japan's low rate of food self-sufficiency, deteriorating Sino-Japanese relations and the ‘China threat theory’, and perceptions of food safety. The article shows how, despite suffering recent major domestic food contamination incidents and lethal domestic food terrorism, Japanese food is perceived as safe and healthy whereas imported food, and especially Chinese food, is perceived as dangerous and unhealthy. This is exemplified in the domestic response to the two cases: the gyōza incident led to a national outcry, mass hysteria, and calls for a ban on Chinese food imports. Conversely, the raw beef contamination incident – the deadliest case of food contamination in Japan since the 1990s – saw a far more mixed response, as industry, media, and consumers called for the government to allow individuals to take on self-responsibility to mediate their own risks regarding (domestically produced Japanese) food. The article concludes by pointing out that, while behavioural sciences can tell us important things about risk, the political and international context must also be considered.
Studies of risk perception examine the judgements people make when they are asked to characterize and evaluate hazardous activities
and technologies. This research aims to aid risk analysis and policy-making by providing a basis for understanding and anticipating
public responses to hazards and improving the communication of risk information among lay people, technical experts, and decision-makers.
This work assumes that those who promote and regulate health and safety need to understand how people think about and respond
to risk. Without such understanding, well-intended policies may be ineffective.
Background
Previous research has shown that the media can play a role in shaping consumer perceptions during a public health crisis. In order for public health professionals to communicate well-informed health information to the media, it is important that they understand how media view their role in transmitting public health information to consumers and decide what information to present. This paper reports the perceptions of media actors from three countries about their role in reporting information during a food incident. This information is used to present ideas and suggestions for public health professionals working with media during food scares.
Methods
Thirty three semi-structured interviews with media actors from Australia, New Zealand and the United Kingdom were conducted and analysed thematically. Media actors were recruited via purposive sampling using a sampling strategy, from a variety of formats including newspaper, television, radio and online.
Results
Media actors said that during a food incident, they play two roles. First, they play a role in communicating information to consumers Second they play a role as investigators.
Conclusion
Media actors are an important source of consumer information during food incidents. Public health professionals can work with media by actively approaching them with information about food incidents; promoting to media that as public health professionals, they are best placed to provide the facts about food incidents; and by providing angles for further investigation and directing media to relevant and correct information to inform such investigations. Public health professionals who adapt how they work with media are more likely to influence media to portray messages that fit what they would like the public to know and that are in line with public health recommendations and enable consumers to engage in safe and health promoting behaviours in response to food scares.
Qualitative content analysis: theoretical foundation, basic procedures and software solution Mayring, Philipp Erstveröffentlichung / Primary Publication Monographie / monograph Empfohlene Zitierung / Suggested Citation: Mayring, Philipp : Qualitative content analysis: theoretical foundation, basic procedures and software solution. Klagenfurt, 2014. URN: http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:0168-ssoar-395173 Nutzungsbedingungen: Dieser Text wird unter einer CC BY-NC-ND Lizenz (Namensnennung-Nicht-kommerziell-Keine Bearbeitung) zur Verfügung gestellt. Nähere Auskünfte zu den CC-Lizenzen finden Sie hier: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Terms of use: This document is made available under a CC BY-NC-ND Licence (Attribution Non Comercial-NoDerivatives). For more Information see: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/
In this article we examine how and why the media construct food risks, from the perspective of ‘media actors’ (people involved in different types of media) using data from 30 interviews conducted in 2013 with media actors from Australia and the United Kingdom. In modern society, many risks are invisible and are brought to the attention of the public through representations in the mass media. This is particularly relevant for food safety, where the widening gap between producers and consumers in the developed world has increased the need for consumer trust in the food supply. We show the importance of newsworthiness in construction of media stories about food risk using Beck’s ideas on cosmopolitan risk to interpret the data. We note the ways in which the strategies that media actors use to construct stories about food risk amplify the risk posed potentially creating consumer anxiety about the safety of the food system. It is important for food regulators and public health professionals to be aware of this anxiety when presenting information about a food incident so that they can target their message accordingly to decrease anxiety.
This article reports causes and consequences of the mediatization of politics about activities of the German parliament (Der Bundestag) and coverage of German politics in three national newspapers during 1951–1995. During this period, the number of decision-making activities remained fairly constant, the number of information activities significantly increased, and coverage of German politics changed: Although the number of reports triggered by events and issues remained fairly constant, the number of stories triggered by statements (about events or issues) significantly increased and those triggered by statements made by politicians increasingly overshadowed articles triggered by nonpoliticians. Declarations of actions and demands for action, in particular, seemed to trigger articles, which indicates a growing importance of symbolic politics and has implications for citizens' relations to decision makers.
The article describes an approach of systematic, rule guided qualitative text analysis, which tries to preserve some methodological strengths of quantitative content analysis and widen them to a concept of qualitative procedure. First the development of content analysis is delineated and the basic principles are explained (units of analysis, step models, working with categories, validity and reliability). Then the central procedures of qualitative content analysis, inductive development of categories and deductive application of categories, are worked out. The possibilities of computer programs in supporting those qualitative steps of analysis are shown and the possibilities and limits of the approach are discussed. URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0002204
Culinary consciousness raisers, cooking texts often serve as vehicles of national identification. From Pampille (Marthe Allard Daudet) and her cookbook, Les Bons Plats de France, in 1913 to the international culinary competitions of today such as the Bocuse d'or, culinary distinction promotes national interests. In contrast to the strident nationalism of the early twentieth century, culinary nationalism today operates in an increasingly globalized world. National culinary distinction defines the nation and sells its products in a highly competitive international arena. A recent culinary text, the South Korean film Le Grand Chef [Sik Gaek ] (2007), illustrates the phenomenon, subsuming national culinary promotion in a mega culinary competition, all in the service of Korean culinary achievement.
Public understanding of risks is likely to be informed by the media. We report a cross-national study looking at how newspapers in Sweden and the United Kingdom characterize a variety of risks, focusing on two months around the 10th anniversary of the Chernobyl accident. Approximately four times as many reports about risks were found in Sweden as in the U.K., possibly reflecting a Swedish safety culture. The Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) crisis dominated reporting in both countries, especially in the U.K. The proportion and pattern of reports on Chernobyl was similar across countries. However, in Sweden, there was an increase in reports about other nuclear hazards after the anniversary, suggesting that generalization of media concern may have occurred. Generally, BSE was discussed using a greater number of characterizations in the U.K., while Chernobyl was reported using more characterizations in Sweden. Reports about hazards tended to be alarmist rather than reassuring, and rarely used statistics to express degrees of risk.
No country feels China's rise more deeply than Japan. Through case studies of visits by Japanese politicians to the Yasukuni Shrine, conflicts over the boundaries of economic zones in the East China Sea, concerns about food safety, and strategies of island defense, this book explores the policy issues testing the Japanese government as it tries to navigate its relationship with an advancing China. The book finds that Japan's interactions with China extend far beyond the negotiations between diplomats and include a broad array of social actors intent on influencing the Sino–Japanese relationship. Some of the tensions complicating Japan's encounters with China, such as those surrounding the Yasukuni Shrine or territorial disputes, have deep roots in the postwar era, and political advocates seeking a stronger Japanese state organize themselves around these causes. Other tensions manifest themselves during the institutional and regulatory reform of maritime boundary and food safety issues. The text scrutinizes the role of the Japanese government in coping with contention as China's influence grows and Japanese citizens demand more protection. Underlying the government's efforts is Japan's insecurity about its own capacity for change and its waning status as the leading economy in Asia. For many, China's rise means Japan's decline, and Smith suggests how Japan can maintain its regional and global clout as confidence in its postwar diplomatic and security approach diminishes.
Using data collected in the assessment survey of a series of data journalism (DJ) training activities in Hong Kong, this study compares participants’ learning activities. These participants consist of students, scholars and professionals from diverse academic backgrounds. The findings show that significant differences exist between learners with journalism-related backgrounds and those with science backgrounds. Compared with journalism majors, during the activities, science majors interact with others more and get more practice; they also gain more theoretical and practical outcomes alongside higher levels of learning enjoyment. Interviews with journalism majors indicate that lack of fundamental knowledge, time and support in practice brings difficulties to their DJ learning. Suggestions for an interdisciplinary approach to journalism education were also collected through interviews, which include more information on DJ, a deeper level of interdisciplinary interaction and more interactions with the industry. Survey and in-depth interviews are both used in this research to provide references for DJ students and instructors.
Stating that imported Chinese food has a negative image in Japan is neither new nor surprising. Conventional explanations of this phenomenon focus on the litany of food scandals associated with imported Chinese food, together with a near-constant wave of scandals in China itself, which have been subject to saturation media coverage in Japan since the turn of the century. However, this chapter argues that the hyperbolic public and media response is disproportionate to the food safety risks associated with the consumption of Chinese food. This chapter starts by assessing two common explanations for the widespread negative perceptions of Chinese food: (1) the development of a consumer awareness in Japan and (2) a heightening risk of consuming Chinese imported foods in the 2000s. The chapter then outlines potential alternative factors, which have also played a key role in the increasingly negative perceptions of Chinese food imports. While there has been an overall increase in the number of reported Chinese food scandals since the 2000s, broader Japanese perceptions of China, the related nature of media coverage of events in China, and the changing nature of Chinese food incidents, among others, are central factors in the development of the perception of a Chinese food threat.
The BSE epidemic, GM foods, avian flu, the growth of supermarkets and the crisis in obesity have shaken consumer trust in food. Uncovering surprising differences between countries, Trust in Food examines this and challenges the idea of the consumer as a sovereign individual, demonstrating how consumption is institutionalized within society. © Unni Kjærnes, Mark Harvey and Alan Warde 2007. All rights reserved.
In this article, I explore questions of food safety after the meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant. In the aftermath of the disaster, people concerned about food safety were sometimes suspicious about the ability of the Japanese state to adequately monitor the food supply and introduce safety standards that they considered strict enough. I use the concept of scientific citizenship to explore the dynamics whereby people's relationship to state expertise was transformed as they learned about the science of radiation. Scientific citizenship was expressed in a desire to circumvent the state to protect the health and life of current and future generations. I focus on the language used to describe food safety to show the work of affective networks of trust in constituting a sense of safety in the postdisaster environment. Ethnographically, I focus on the work of mothers and food activists who banded together to share and disseminate knowledge about radiation so they could protect their own and each other's children.
This article reviews media-related aspects of the 2009 Japanese lower house elections, which saw the historic defeat of the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party by the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). Drawing mainly on Internet sources and on interviews with politicians and political journalists, the authors argue that the DPJ relied primarily on conventional media strategies and made only limited use of new media in their campaign. If the DPJ hopes permanently to transform Japan’s political landscape, the party will need to prioritize the reform of outdated election campaign legislation and abolish “closed shop” reporters’ clubs.
Government-led food reforms are increasingly prevalent and they are often seen as a welcome corrective to the neoliberalization of the agrofood system. Yet Japanese government's food reform initiatives demonstrates that government food reform does not necessarily increase oversight and regulation or address fundamental problems of the food system. Although the official goals of reform are food safety and public health, the Japanese government juxtaposes food reform with notions of the “traditional family” and women's domestic roles as well as with the nationalistic idealization of “Japanese food” and national branding. The strategy of responsibilization, where the government constructs the food problem as an individual problem rooted in insufficient awareness and irresponsible behaviors is salient. Government food reform needs active monitoring by citizens to resist such pressure to construct food reform as a matter of moral and personal betterment.
The article discusses the recent development of banal forms of nationalism in contemporary Japan by examining a multitude of discourses on food produced by the national government as well as civil organisations working for food safety. Despite the intrinsically hybrid nature marked by the historical trajectory of Japanese food culture, these discourses tend to emphasise and propagate the Japanese element and, in so doing, firmly locate Japanese food as the core of ‘Japaneseness’. In this sense, contemporary food discourse in Japan functions as a powerful biopolitical device by propagating the notion of ‘delicious food in a beautiful country’ on which Japanese people are expected to organise their everyday lives.
One of the most perplexing problems in risk analysis is why some relatively minor risks or risk events, as assessed by technical experts, often elicit strong public concerns and result in substantial impacts upon society and economy. This article sets forth a conceptual framework that seeks to link systematically the technical assessment of risk with psychological, sociological, and cultural perspectives of risk perception and risk-related behavior. The main thesis is that hazards interact with psychological, social, institutional, and cultural processes in ways that may amplify or attenuate public responses to the risk or risk event. A structural description of the social amplification of risk is now possible. Amplification occurs at two stages: in the transfer of information about the risk, and in the response mechanisms of society. Signals about risk are processed by individual and social amplification stations, including the scientist who communicates the risk assessment, the news media, cultural groups, interpersonal networks, and others. Key steps of amplifications can be identified at each stage. The amplified risk leads to behavioral responses, which, in turn, result in secondary impacts. Models are presented that portray the elements and linkages in the proposed conceptual framework.
This article traces the Japanese media's response to Chinese poison pot-stickers (gyoza) in Japan's food system as they debate and guide consumer-citizens' feelings of increasing vulnerability as individuals in the global market, the nation, and families. Global food becomes a key metaphor for threats to national borders and the need for national food, yet simultaneously for inevitable risk to globally attuned stomachs that can be controlled only by alert housewives and education of the young. Food terror effectively signals citizens' lack of protection in risk society, but leaves unsaid important differences among consumer-citizens to save themselves with scarce Japanese-made food.
If you think about it, most news is quite location-bound, too. While news can take place anywhere, recurring news, the largest category of all news types, mostly happens in predictable hot spots. In Japan, those hot spots for news are the 800- plus locations where kisha clubs just happen to be located and where the clubs exert enormous turf control. The issue is not whether there is or isn’t a kisha club, the issue is who controls the turf. That’s what makes membership so critical and the clubs so powerful.
Over the past two decades the pace and specificity of discoveries associating genetics with mental illness has accelerated, which is reflected in an increase in news coverage about the genetics of mental disorder. The news media is a major source of public understanding of genetics and a strong influence on public discourse. This paper examines the news coverage of genetics and mental illness (i.e., bipolar illness and schizophrenia) over a 25 year period, emphasizing the peak period of 1987-1994. Using a sample of 110 news stories from 5 major American newspapers and 3 news magazines, we identify the frame of "genetic optimism" which dominated the reporting of genetics and mental illness beginning in the mid- 1980s. The structure of the frame is comprised of 3 elements: a gene for the disorder exists; it will be found; and it will be good. New discoveries of genes were announced with great fanfare, but the most promising claims could not be replicated or were retracted in short order. Despite these disconfirmations, genetic optimism persisted in subsequent news stories. While the scientific accuracy of the gene stories is high, the genetic optimism frame distorts some of the findings, misrepresents and reifies the impact of genes on mental disorder, and leaves no space for critics or an examination of potential negative impacts. The stances of reporters, scientists and editors may all in different ways contribute to the perpetuation of genetic optimism. Genetic optimism presents an overly sanguine picture of the state of genetics; as we enter the genetic age it is important to balance the extraneous "hype and hope" contained in news stories of genetics and mental illness.
Empirical examinations of the "social amplification of risk" framework are rare, partly because of the difficulties in predicting when conditions likely to result in amplification effects will occur. This means that it is difficult to examine changes in risk perception that are contemporaneous with increases and/or decreases in social or media discussion of the risks associated with a particular risk event. However, the collection of attitude data before, during, and after the increased reporting of the risks of genetically modified food in the United Kingdom (spring 1999) has demonstrated that people's risk perceptions do increase and decrease in line with what might be expected upon examination of the amplification and attenuation mechanisms integral to the framework. Perceptions of benefit, however, appeared to be permanently depressed by negative reporting about genetically modified food. Trust in regulatory institutions with responsibility for protecting the public was not affected. It was concluded that the social amplification of risk framework is a useful framework for beginning to explain the potential impact on risk perceptions of a risk event, particularly if that risk event is presented to the public as a new hazard occurring in a crisis context.
Hu’s Dumpling Diplomacy
- James Farrer
- Koichi Nakano
Shokutaku wa Ima Gyōza Jiken Kara Ichinen
- Shimbun Asahi
Chūgokusan shokuhin wo kōnyū shite imasu ka?
- Shimbun Asahi
Ishū kujō, 13 tofuken kara. Kōhyō ikka getsu han
- Shimbun Asahi
Reitō shokuhin ni nōyaku tentō kara zokuzoku tekkyo” [Anxiety of food, relapses at the end of the year. Continually remove frozen foods from stores because of agricultural chemicals
- Shimbun Asahi
Chōshugo, tōkakan sugata kesu nōyaku konnyū yōgisha
- Shimbun Asahi
Nōyaku konnyū, ikkagetsu ijō ka 10-fukuro, kinmubi icchi Abe yōgi-sha” [Pesticide contamination, over a month ago. Ten contaminated bags, working days of suspect Abe matching
- Shimbun Asahi
Takasago no ikka… kyōfu to fuchō ima mo. Ishi ga kiten, ichimei sukuu” [Chinese Gyoza Poisoning. Takasago Family … Fear and Bad Conditions now as Well. Doctor Gains Tactics, Saves Lives
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Chūgokusei gyōza Isesaki Midori de kyūshoku ni teikyō kenkō higai 4-ken 8-ri” [Chinese dumplings were provided for school lunch at isesaki · Midori. Health damage 4 cases 8 people
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Reitō shokuhin toiawase 33 man-ken akurifūzu nado ni
- Yomiuri Shimbun
Opinion: Anzen'na shokuhin wa sanchoku no mono wo
- Shimbun Asahi
Reitō shokuhin kensa,’insei' ni hotsu” [Frozen food inspections: relief for ‘negative
- Shimbun Asahi
Nōyaku, kogata yōki de tarasu?
- Shimbun Asahi
Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear. Virgin Books
- Dan Gardner
Food Safety and Quality Standards in Japan. Compliance of Suppliers from Developing Countries. Agriculture and Rural Development Discussion Paper”. The World Bank Washington
- Theo H Jonker
- Hiroshi Ito
- Hiroji Fujishima
Responsibility or Right to Eat Well? Food Education (Shokuiku) Campaign in Japan
- Aiko Kojima
Sekai wa dō miru: Chūgoku seihin no anzensei mondai” [How Does the World Look at It: Safety problems with Chinese goods
- Mainichi Shimbun
Chūgoku Shokuhin wo Meguru Risuku Komyunikēshon No Kōchiku wo Mezashite.”[Towards Building Risk Communication Related to Chinese Foods
- Emako Miyoshi