Food Policy 45 (2014) 167–173

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Food Policy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/foodpol

Social imaginary and dilemmas of policy practice: The food safety arena
in Japan
Tomiko Yamaguchi ⇑
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, International Christian University, 3-10-2 Osawa, Mitaka, Tokyo 181-8585, Japan

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Keywords: Through the string of food safety scares that has rocked Japanese society since the early 2000s, conflicts
Food safety between the traditional notion of socially acceptable risk and the idea of a science-based risk analysis
Public policy discourse approach have surfaced in the food safety arena. Elites, including government officials and those mem-
Social imaginary
bers of scientific communities who support the science-based risk analysis approach, have become
Japan
responsible for communicating seemingly contradictory ideas such as ‘‘food in Japan is safe’’ and ‘‘there
is no such thing as zero risk with food.’’ This communication logjam has resulted in confusion and created
public distrust of both government and scientific experts. Against this backdrop, this paper aims to exam-
ine the struggles and challenges faced by government officials in explaining and practicing policies that
pertain to highly controversial food safety issues. The primary data used for illuminating the discourses is
the official minutes of governmental committees including the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Com-
mittee and the Consumer Commission.
Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction entitled ‘‘Gaps between reality and perception of risk’’ (Yomiuri,

Through the string of food safety scares that has rocked Japanese
society since the early 2000s, conflicts between those who empha-
size traditional notions of socially acceptable risk and those who
support a science-based risk analysis approach have surfaced in
the food safety arena. Elites, including government officials and
those members of the scientific community who support the sci-
ence-based risk analysis approach, have become responsible for
communicating such seemingly contradictory ideas as ‘‘food in Ja-
pan is safe’’ and ‘‘there is no such thing as zero risk with food.’’
Not surprisingly, they seem to encounter difficulty in determining
how to communicate these ideas. This difficulty has resulted in con-
fusion, created distrust in the government and scientific experts,
and generated a public sentiment that it is not wise to leave food
safety issues to the government. A notable behavior of consumers
is to withdraw from products that are suspected of any trace of risk.
For instance, an opinion survey concerning the Japanese govern-
ment’s decision to lift the ban on imports of US beef after an out-
break of mad cow disease was said to be controlled (a summary
report is available at http://www.intage.co.jp/chikara/02_topics/
470/). The survey found that 45.4% out of 809 respondents indicated
that they would continue to avoid the purchase of US beef even after
the government announcement that it was now deemed safe. A
more recent example is the fact that, as indicated in a news report
⇑ Tel./fax: +81 422 33 3716.
E-mail address: tyamaguc@icu.ac.jp
2011), some consumers are avoiding the purchase of farm products
from Fukushima and the northern Kanto Region, including Ibaraki,
Tochigi, Gunma and Saitama Prefectures, due to concern over radi-
ation deposits, again despite government assurances. While many
consumers have expressed their opinions through consumption
patterns, others have petitioned and lobbied for food safety reform
(Stolle et al. 2005). All of these phenomena attest to the fact that is-
sues related to food safety have become topics of concern and con-
troversy (Blue 2010).
Having adopted a risk analysis approach to food safety regula-
tion since the early 2000s – an approach that utilizes science-based
analysis and policy instruments designed to achieve sound and con-
sistent solutions to food safety issues (FAO/WHO, 2006) – the Japa-
nese government wishes to move away from the public policy
discourse that had previously encouraged the perception that ‘‘zero
risk’’ is an attainable goal when it comes to food. However, a widely
shared expectation within Japanese society is that safety efforts will
go well beyond absence of evidence of danger; cultural and social
norms lead to the expectation that the government will strive to as-
sure ‘‘zero risk’’ in foods. Thus it is not clear what food safety means.
People assume that there is a mutually shared understanding of
what ‘‘safe’’ means within the broader society, but even a cursory
examination quickly makes it clear that there are multiple mean-
ings assigned to the idea of ‘‘safe’’ food. For instance, some people
seem to understand that for food to be safe means that artificial
substances such as biological and chemical contaminants are zero,
while others interpret safety in terms equivalent to scientific

0306-9192/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foodpol.2013.06.014
168 T. Yamaguchi / Food Policy 45 (2014) 167–173
criteria such as de minimis – most commonly defined as a risk level
equivalent to one additional cancer case per one million exposed
individuals (Williams and Paustenbach, 2002) – or assume the no-
tion of safety to be much broader in definition, using a ‘‘balancing
principle’’ whereby socioeconomic consequences and other factors
are compared with health consequences (FAO, 1997). In other
words, while ‘‘safe food’’ is what is envisioned and expected within
society and is also a legitimate goal of food policy, it is not clear
which version of safety is to be used as the basis of food policy.
As will be explained more fully below, social norms in Japanese
society predispose consumers to equate food safety with zero risk.
This makes it hard for the government to find a way to convincingly
communicate to the public that food in Japan is safe while at the
same time communicating the fact that the risk analysis approach
does not assume that risk is zero. These tensions have become a tre-
mendous challenge for the government in communicating its cur-
rent food safety policies to the public and in putting them into
practice.
Against this backdrop, this paper aims to examine the struggles
and challenges faced by government officials in explaining policies
that pertain to highly controversial food safety issues. It also iden-
tifies the challenges that such a disjunction imposes on the govern-
ment in putting food safety policies into practice. The primary data
used for illuminating the discourses is the official minutes of gov-
ernmental committees including the Agriculture, Forestry and
Fisheries Committee (AFFC), available through the database Min-
utes of National Assembly Search System, which contains the min-
utes of all the national assembly and government standing
committees held since May 1947 and the minutes of the Consumer
Commission, available through the Consumer Affairs Agency web-
site. The database Kokkai Kaigiroku Kensaku System (Minutes of Na-
tional Assembly Search System) contains the minutes of all the na-
tional assembly and the government standing committees held
since May 1947. As of June 2011, the database contained 1.53 mil-
lion pages of minutes.
Participant observation was also made at workshops and semi-
nars featuring food safety and public policy discussion, so as to
gain insights for the analysis. Discussions that took place in the
governmental committees are relevant for exploring these ques-
tions because the participants are central players in the formula-
tion of policy (for example, the Minister of the AFFC), and
because they are aware that all minutes of meetings will be made
available to the public and that their statements are likely to be
scrutinized; thus in their choice of words they are likely to take
into account their beliefs about public perceptions. The paper will
first lay out the analytical framework, then provide an analysis of
discourse in the food safety arena. A particular focus of this paper
is to understand whether and in what ways government officials
engage with social expectations, given the framework of laws
and institutions that currently govern food safety in Japan. The
challenges created through the tensions between these different
forces are discussed in the conclusion.
Analytical framework
Social arena
A social arena is a symbolic space in which concerned parties
engage in interactions intended to influence collective decisions
or policy outcomes. Building on the idea of a social arena as a dis-
cursive space in which people from varying social worlds meet and
interact (Strauss, 1978; Hilgartner and Bosk, 1988; Wiener, 2000),
this paper looks at the discourse of an arena in which conflicts over
concerns about food safety take place. Using the notion of arena as
an analytical lens, some studies have uncovered the somewhat
hidden social processes that exist in scientific knowledge-making
by focusing on a discursive space observed within scientific com-
munities, in which scientists are the primary participants in the
arena (Fujimura, 1988; Christensen and Casper, 2000), while others
have examined conflicts over technical and scientific matters with-
in the wider society in which various types of stakeholders such as
scientists, people from industry, consumers and policy-makers
take part (Clarke, 1990; Clarke and Montini, 1993).
The present paper focuses on the latter, shedding light on a
space that lies at the intersection of science and society – in other
words, an arena in which a variety of stakeholders are involved.
Although I have distinguished between two types of studies with
the aim of demonstrating where the present paper is situated con-
ceptually, these are not mutually exclusive and distinct categories.
We can think of a situation in which experts with various affilia-
tions, disciplinary backgrounds, perspectives and ideologies partic-
ipate in the controversies taking place within the wider society or
in which different factions of the public use experts to advance
their agendas, in which case the boundaries between these two
bodies of literature become blurred. For example, ongoing conflicts
and debates in Japan about the regulation of radioactivity depos-
ited or present in food illustrate the issues that can arise when sci-
entists play an active role in social conflicts or when citizen groups
use experts to advance their agendas. Under these circumstances,
what Gieryn (1983) calls boundary-work occurs, in which another
layer of problems arises. These problems are not only scientific and
technical, such as how we consider health risks arising from sub-
stances such as radioactive nuclide deposits in food, but also social
– such questions as which experts are making legitimate claims
and whose science is correct (Brewer and Ley, 2012). The notion
of boundary-work suggests that an issue enters into the social do-
main when scientists take sides on an issue that is polarized and
when the roles, responsibilities and authority of experts within
an arena become controversial or unclear.
Food safety arena
When it comes to an arena that involves both scientific assess-
ment of risk and policy decisions to determine appropriate safety
standards in particular, the contour of the arena is determined
not only by the ability and/or resources of individuals and organiza-
tions to influence the process and outcome of conflicts, but also by
structural constraints that set the goals of policy agendas (Renn,
1992). Renn (1992) identifies public policy agendas as a combina-
tion of formal rules, coded and monitored by a rule enforcement
agency, and informal rules, such as the political climate of group
interactions and role expectations, learned and developed in the
process of interactions among participating groups. The public pol-
icies set forth and the rules stipulated within the Food Safety Basic
Act enacted in 2003, for instance, influence the way in which dis-
cursive battles play out in the food safety arena in Japan, but at
the same time, wishing to influence policy processes and outcomes,
government officials may consider social expectations as suggested
by risk arena theory. Indeed, one study suggests that when there is
no conclusive evidence to determine which policy option is most
likely to work best, policy makers operate according to a logic of so-
cial appropriateness (Rein and Winship, 1997). In some cases, nor-
mative ideas could be so influential that they could override the
interests of policy makers (Quirk, 1990). These forces can facilitate
or limit the influences that participating groups have over the
determination of public policy. Such enabling or limiting forces
may generate an outcome that is incompatible with the values
and goals of participating groups and even at odds with the factual
evidence that the groups bring to bear on the debate. Factors such
as social appropriateness and normative ideas can thus create enor-
mous difficulties in the formulation and implementation of
 T. Yamaguchi / Food Policy 45 (2014) 167–173
science-based policies and may sometimes exacerbate tensions
within and among the participating groups.
As described above, risk arena theory provides a useful analyt-
ical lens to understand science and societal relations in studying
food policies; however the theory focuses mainly on debates over
risk, and the sociocultural and political dynamics therein. Thus
many other issues hinging on ‘‘safety’’ are unaddressed, such as
processes and consequences of decision-making in determining
the meaning of safe or unsafe, or the practice of ‘‘safety’’ (Lederer,
2011). In contrast, the existing literature on food safety examines
either scientific and technical issues or the economics involved in
food safety policies (Henson and Caswell, 1999), but omits the is-
sues that lie at the intersection of science and society. In order to
fill in these gaps, this paper argues that examining the discourse
created by governmental officials will enrich our understanding
of the challenges of practicing science-based public policies in a
society in which the pursuit of the ideal of zero is seen as norma-
tive and as an integral component of the mutual expression of re-
spect and cooperation. In order to better capture the tensions that
arise in the food safety arena, the paper will bring in the notion of
‘‘social imaginaries’’ (Taylor, 2004). A social imaginary encom-
passes aspects of the social world which go beyond the traditional
definition of an arena: it includes the symbolic dimensions of social
life – the ways in which people conceive of their society and the
roles, rules and expectations that govern it. Social imaginaries pro-
vide a basis for social order and also function as important bases of
public policy, even with respect to areas in which we might expect
thought and discussion to be firmly grounded in seemingly objec-
tive fact, such as scientific and technical agendas. As Jasanoff and
Kim (2009:120) have forcefully argued, imaginaries and the poli-
cies built upon them influence ‘‘the design and fulfillment of na-
tion-specific scientific and/or technological projects’’ and thus
come to influence the objective conditions of our society. Building
on the concept of ‘‘sociotechnical imaginaries,’’ the key argument
of this paper is that the ideal of ‘safety’ functions not only as an ab-
stract vision of society that shapes or even warps debate but that it
can also function as a key element in designing and practicing food
policies. Additionally, the status of ‘zero’ as a socio-cultural con-
struct and as an integral part of a social imaginary must be taken
into account in order to understand certain facets of the food safety
arena.
Food safety arena in Japan
The food safety arena in contemporary Japan can be character-
ized in terms of the introduction of a risk-analysis approach to food
policies within the context of a social imaginary best captured
through the Japanese term anzen-anshin. This section describes
these two key elements in turn.
Risk analysis approach
Among several formal rules that influence the framing of policy
statements in Japan, the Food Safety Act plays a significant role. Here
I will briefly elaborate on the process by which the Act came about
and the framework that the Act sets forth in the food risk arena in
Japan. The BSE (Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy) outbreak in
2001, the most prominent food scare in Japan, brought issues con-
cerning food safety to the center stage of the food policy agendas
(Fox and Peterson, 2004; Kamisato, 2005; Sato, 2010). (Needless to
say, the BSE outbreak was also a prominent food scare in Europe,
the US and Canada. The issues involved have been studied exten-
sively from various disciplinary perspectives. Papers that focus on
the themes of risk communication, risk management and public pol-
icies include Caskie et al., 1998, Jasanoff, 1997, Kuzma and Ahl, 2006,
169
Millstone and Van Zwanenberg, 2007 among others.) Since then, the
Japanese government has begun reorganizing the regulatory mech-
anisms by revising laws, enacting new laws and re-arranging the
institutions governing food safety. For instance, a revision was made
to the Food Sanitation Act, which previously was the only law
addressing food safety issues; the purpose of the law was revised
to explicitly stipulate that the law is to protect the health of consum-
ers, an aspect which had not been explicitly stated previously. Par-
allel to the revision of the Food Sanitation Act, a new law, the Food
Safety Basic Act (hereafter described as the Act), was enacted in
2003. Prescribing the model of the Codex Alimentarius Commission
(hereafter described as Codex; text is available at www.codexali-
mentarium.net/procedural_manual.stm), this new Act is an attempt
to shift gears in the food safety governance of Japan by bringing in
new ideas and renewed institutional arrangements according to a
statement made by the President of the Science Council of Japan at
a public forum called ‘‘Shoku no Anzen to Anshin o Mezashite (Pur-
suing the dual goal of science-based food safety and socially ac-
cepted food safety)’’ held in October 2003. The purpose of the Act
is to move away from a ‘‘traditional food safety system’’ to a ‘‘mod-
ern food safety system’’ using primarily the model suggested by the
Codex (Fig. 1). Among several characteristics described by the Co-
dex, the Act emphasizes the following three things: (1) devising pol-
icies that will assure food safety at all stages of the food chain
(Article 4); (2) a shift to a science-based risk analysis approach (Arti-
cle 11); and (3)stipulating the responsibilities and roles of con-
cerned parties, namely the national government (Articles 6), local
governments (Article 7), food businesses and industries (Article 8),
and consumers (Article 10), with the aim of sharing responsibilities.
Along with these changes, the government became responsible for
disseminating information and exchanging ideas among the parties
concerned, in accordance with Article 13 of the Act. Article 13 of the
Act elaborates on the risk communication activities to be carried out
among stakeholders when public policy decisions are to be made.
The parties concerned include consumers, people in food industry
and businesses, FSC, MAFF, MHLW and local governments. Risk
communication activities include such activities as organizing pub-
lic fora, seeking public comments during the drafting stages of pub-
lic policy, organizing information sessions on the results of scientific
risk assessment, (Shokuhin Anzen KihonSeisaku Kenkyukai, 2005).
The Act stipulates that a risk analysis approach consists of three
components: risk assessment, risk management and risk commu-
nication. The Act envisions that these three components will make
it possible to respond to food safety problems in a systematic,
structured and scientific way, thus also improving the quality of
decision-making throughout the food chain. The Food Safety Com-
mission (FSC), a newly established institution created under one
provision of the Act, was mandated to carry out scientific risk
assessment, while other government ministries including the Min-
istry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fishery (MAFF) and the Ministry
of Health, Labor and Welfare (MHLW) were given the tasks of risk
management; their expected role is to facilitate the process of
building consensus among interested parties, while using the sci-
entific advice of the FSC and also considering the social and eco-
nomic needs of society.
Imagined food safety: anzen-anshin
In contrast to the bold new vision of a scientific risk assessment
and management approach put forth by the Act, Japanese society
has a long-standing social imaginary of food safety, summed up
in the expression anzen-anshin. Analysis of policy deliberations
suggests that the paired terms anzen-anshin are routinely used
to describe two important, socially legitimate and widely accepted
ways of dealing with matters related to safety. The terms inher-
ently embody a certain ambiguity because, while they can be
170 T. Yamaguchi / Food Policy 45 (2014) 167–173
Fig. 1. Food safety system.
pressed into service to describe the science-based risk analysis
model, they traditionally convey a set of social expectations and
an imaginary of Japanese society that goes beyond the risk-analysis
model. To put it simply, anzen refers to scientifically proven safety,
while the dictionary translation of anshin is ‘‘relief from anxiety’’;
in the context of the cases that the present study deals with, it
can be more accurately translated as ‘‘socially accepted safety.’’
Underlying this thinking is the belief that assuring anzen is the
absolute minimum requirement, and that assuring anshin is also
required when foods are put on the market. In other words, anshin
describes the responsibility on the part of the entity who devel-
oped the products or who permits the products to be on the market
to proactively assure safety and to protect the public health and re-
frain from harming the environment. This is an extra measure of
responsibility that goes beyond merely running required tests or
meeting a certain minimum standard; it suggests that a company
or industry goes ‘‘the extra mile’’ and actively seeks to ensure that
the public has no cause for concern. There appears to be no exact
translation for this expression in English, and there is no obvious
corollary to this concept in Western culture or discourse.
To elaborate on the contours of public policy discourse and also
demonstrate the centrality of the notion, a search for the term an-
zen-anshin has been done in the database of Minutes of the Na-
tional Assembly, which yielded 1736 statements. Breakdown of
these statements into six different periods demonstrates that the
usage of this phrase has become more frequent since 2000. While
between the years 1950–1959 and 1960–1969, the search yielded
0 statements, a gradual increase is observed between 1970–1979
(2 statements) and 1980–1989 (3 statements); a dramatic increase
is experienced between 1990–1999 (80 statements) and 2000–
2009 (1651 statements). A search for the word zettai-anzen (‘‘abso-
lute safety,’’ implying zero risk) also yielded a substantive number
of statements, but these showed the opposite tendency in terms of
the frequency of usage in public policy statements. The number of
statements has gone down since the1970s (Table 1). These broader
changes provide some insight into how the statements made by
policy makers have shifted away from a term that clearly and
unambiguously indicates zero risk to a term that will be widely
understood to communicate essentially the same idea and yet re-
mains more open to interpretation. Finally, a search was performed
for the English phrase ‘‘zero risk’’ in the form in which it has been
adopted into Japanese (‘‘zero risuku’’), but yielded only 32 state-
ments. The breakdown of the 32 statements is as follows: one
statement for the 1970s, zero for the 1980s, one for the 1990s,
and 30 for the 2000s. The term frequently began to appear in the
discourse only during the last decade and is used primarily in
the context of criticism of the goal of zero risk, rather than in
Table 1
Frequency of usage of terms, by decade.
Anzen-anshin Zettai anzen
1950 0 66
1960 0 98
1970 2 182
1980 3 86
1990 80 74
2000 1651 66
Total 1736 572
statements intended to promote it as a goal. While the loan-phrase
‘‘zero risuku’’ was not previously established as acommon way of
describing the goal of absolute safety, the established and nuanced
phrase anzen-anshin clearly implies proactively seeking to assure
zero risk, as we will see in statements drawn from government pol-
icy meetings.
While it does indicate safety in scientific terms, the term anzen-
anshin goes further to evoke an expectation that all measures will
be taken proactively to ensure absence of risk. The role of the soci-
etal norm captured in the expression anzen-anshin has been explic-
itly invoked to push for the pursuit of the ideal of zero risk. For
example, at a government hearing held on May 8, 2003 on the Food
Safety Basic Act, an academician who was invited to a session of the
Cabinet Committee as a witness pointed out the importance of
respecting the public sentiment in food policies. He commented,
‘‘the public and consumers have a strong desire to attain the goal
of perfect safety. I totally understand the sentiment of pursuing
zero risk. . . Stating that there is no such thing as zero risk seems
to be too cold a statement. With respect to attaining anzen-anshin,
the public would seek zero risk. In my opinion, the government
ought to understand these sentiments. . .’’ He thus explicitly states
the connection between anzen-anshin and zero risk, in words that
imply that this connection is obvious to his audience and does
not require proof; the issue to his mind is the duty of the govern-
ment to respect the well-known sentiments of the public.
In the context of Japanese society, this expectation has meant,
for example, that even if a scientific risk evaluation has been com-
pleted by an expert committee such as the Food Safety Commis-
sion, in other words a scientific basis of safety has been
established in accordance with the then available scientific knowl-
edge, it has frequently been the case that the safety of a product is
nevertheless subjected to further scrutiny. For instance, a repre-
sentative of a consumer interest group, speaking at the January 6,
2012 session of the Committee on Food Labeling of the Consumer
Commission, acknowledged that a scientific risk evaluation on
 T. Yamaguchi / Food Policy 45 (2014) 167–173
GMO foods had been completed by the FSC, but nevertheless ar-
gued that not all safety concerns had been allayed. This speaker
did not cite evidence of toxicity or danger, but rather spoke of
the need to proactively examine the possibility of toxicity before
coming to any conclusions. She commented, ‘‘I am aware that a
[scientific] risk evaluation has already been completed. . .but I
came across some studies. . .which suggest safety concerns,’’ and
argued that further studies needed to be done before any conclu-
sions could be reached. (The minutes of the session are available
(in Japanese) at http://www.cao.go.jp/consumer/history/01/
kabusoshiki/syokuhinhyouji/bukai/001/shiryou/index.html).
It should be noted that at the time this comment was made, the
government had introduced a science-based risk analysis frame-
work to food safety regulation. When voices are raised like that
in the governmental committee, the voices asking for the pursuit
of zero risk will generally be treated as representing a legitimate
perspective and will not easily be dismissed as expressing un-
founded worries.
In some cases, pursuit of anshin will override decisions based on
scientific knowledge. For instance, immediately after the BSE out-
break the Japanese government introduced a policy to screen all
the cattle imported to Japan so as to assure that the cattle affected
by BSE will not get into Japanese food chains – in the name of pro-
viding anshin to the people. At the time the decision was made, the
then-Minister of MAFF at the Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries
Committee said, ‘‘Even though the data from the UK suggest to
us that 99.95% of the cattle affected by prions are 30 months or
older, to me this suggests that there is a chance that 0.05% of cattle
infected by prions are below 30 months.’’ This statement is in
keeping with the norms of anzen-anshin: focusing on the smallest
element of risk rather than declare that risk has been lowered to
an acceptable level.The Minister explicitly noted the importance
of anshin as he continued, ‘‘Thus we will introduce blanket screen-
ing, stricter than the EU standards, in fact the most strict standard
in the world, [because] it is important to provide anshin to the pub-
lic’’. (AFFC held on October 17, 2001). The screening program has
continued to be carried out to date by all the local governments,
even though the recommendation made by the FSC suggested that
there is no use in carrying out screening of cattle at the age of
20 months or below, because available scientific methods cannot
detect prions at those ages (Karaki, 2010). Indeed, in response to
a questionnaire distributed in 2009 by Shoku no Shinrai Koujyo
wo Mezasu Kai (2009) (The Association for Improving Trust in
Food), designed to examine the reasons that the local govern-
mentscontinue the blanket screening to date, 35 out of 44 local
governments chose the response category ‘‘because we believe
that blanket screening is what the public expects us to do’’, while
only three local governments chose the response category ‘‘be-
cause the program is important to assure safety’’. In fact, the
blanket screening program, whose primary purpose appears to
be allaying the presumed worries of consumers, has required tre-
mendous expenditure on the part of the local governments
– total expenses are said to be approximately 20 billion yen or
more (approximately 200 million US dollars) over the last
decade (according to the source J-Cast News January 8th,
2012. Downloaded from http://www.j-cast.com/2012/01/
08118116.html?p=all).
In other instances, the system introduced for providing anshin
has been criticized for its inability to establish scientific safety.
The government established ‘‘food traceability systems’’ that al-
lows consumers to access produce and product information at
specified stages of production, processing and distribution (FMRIC,
2007) in order to provide anshin to the consumers, but the criticism
has been made that the system only logs information about prod-
ucts and is not a guarantee of zero risk (Mikami, 2007). These phe-
nomena illustrate some of the difficulties engendered by the
171
discrepancy between the standard of anzen-anshin and the de-
mands of a science-based risk analysis approach.
Struggles to go against social imaginaries
Even though the Japanese expectation of anzen-anshin predis-
poses the public to expect that zero risk will be the goal, the gov-
ernment was forced to take a new stance on food safety
governance after the outbreak of BSE in Japan. The tone of the dis-
course in the public policy arena in Japan has changed since then.
Prior to the outbreak, the idea of the zero risk principle was unhes-
itatingly used in policy deliberations. After the outbreaks, the gov-
ernment became more reserved in using the term. Comparison of
the following two statements demonstrates how the tone of the
discourse changed. The latter especially demonstrates how the
government is trying to persuade citizens to accept reasonable lim-
itations on food safety and to clarify the roles and responsibilities
of relevant government units based on a new model.
At the AFFC meeting held on October 17, 1989, the Director of
the Economic Bureau, MAFF responded to a question raised by a
parliamentary member. It should be noted that when high-ranking
government officials are invited to governmental committees to
respond to questions raised by parliament members, the com-
ments generally reflect the dominant ideas of the organization s/
he is representing. The content of the comments is reviewed by
the relevant parties and approved prior to the actual appearance
of the spokesperson at the Committee; therefore what has been
said at these committees both reflects the key ideas of the minis-
tries and also influences the ways in which policies are designed
and practiced (Nishio, 2012). The question posed in this case was
what would be the basis of decisions related to risks of agricultural
crops and food. The Director of the Economic Bureau asserted that
the government supports the ideal of zero risk.
. . .I think there is a conflict between those countries who sup-
port the zero risk principle and those who believe that aiming
to achieve zero risk is not practical. We, in Japan, consider that
strict standards, which utilize the zero risk principle, are
important.
Minutes from the session held on October 17, 1989.
Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Committee.
After the outbreak of BSE, the tone of the public statements by
government changed, de-emphasizing the idea of the zero risk
principle and acknowledging the existence of risks and uncertain-
ties. These shifts coincided with the government’s emphasis on the
importance of utilizing inputs from scientific experts when devis-
ing public policies. Using scientific expertise in policy-making her-
alds a new system that differentiates between scientific matters
and socio-economic matters when making public policy decisions
– namely risk assessment, risk management and risk communica-
tion. These three concepts began to emerge in the discourse fre-
quently. However, public discourse on the new policy direction
shows a certain ambivalence.
A clear illustration of the ambivalence is a statement by Tsu-
tomu Takebe, Minister of Agriculture, in a session of AFFC on March
19, 2002. After noting that ‘‘the US and the European countries
have already introduced the risk management approach – the idea
of risk analysis and risk management – in order to minimize health
risks derived from food,’’ he then asserted that:
. . .We can no longer afford the goal of zero risk. . .food safety
policies in Japan need to introduce a risk management approach
utilizing scientific data. . .Further, I would like to note that we
have not used scientific expertise fully in the past so we now
ought to figure out the roles of experts within our policy-
making.
172 T. Yamaguchi / Food Policy 45 (2014) 167–173
Tsutomu Takebe, Minister of Agriculture.
Minutes from the session held March 19, 2002.
In this series of statements we see an acknowledgment that
zero risk has previously been accepted as a de facto goal in,
whether or not it has been explicitly formulated as such in written
policy. The explicit statement that zero risk is no longer an attain-
able goal also clearly indicates the message that the government
wants to convey to the public; however, in the following state-
ment, concerning the role of scientific experts, we see an indication
that the government nevertheless wants to be culturally and so-
cially appropriate. The ideal of anzen-anshin includes the expecta-
tion that those responsible for the safety of food will go ‘‘above and
beyond’’ to ensure that consumers have no reason to be concerned.
Although the risk management approach shifts some responsibility
onto the public – thus apportioning responsibility in a very differ-
ent way than the social imaginary evoked by anzen-anshin – the
Minister’s statement immediately emphasizes the expanded role
of experts – scientists. Thus even as the statement attempts to con-
vey that the public cannot expect the authorities to uphold the
zero-risk ideal, it also attempts to reassure the public by highlight-
ing the greater involvement of experts. As a result of these different
goals, the key message gets blurred and the statement is open to a
variety of interpretations with respect to how, exactly, the govern-
ment is going to practice science-based safety standards.
The statement above is only one of a number of statements that
demonstrate that the government is having difficulty figuring out
how it can communicate the new risk approaches while making
those approaches palatable to the public by showing respect to
norms and cultural values. In a statement three weeks later (April
3, 2002), the Minister of Agriculture explicitly noted the paradigm
shift underway as he commented, ‘‘Even though the goal of zero risk
is unattainable, we should have had a risk management manual
ready. . .to deal with the BSE issues. . .’’ He then alluded to part of
what the paradigm shift entails by making the somewhat ambigu-
ous statement, ‘‘We are determined to shift from an emphasis on
producer-oriented food policy to policies that are consumer ori-
ented.’’ Recall that the scientific risk-analysis approach represents
a significant break with societal expectations in that it shifts some
responsibility from producers to consumers. The Minister’s state-
ment is however unclear as to whether he means to say that con-
sumers will be more empowered or that they will be given more
responsibility – or some combination of the two. He immediately
added, ‘‘I also add that we are aiming to establish a food system that
will provide food both anzen-anshin.’’ In short, the Minister’s state-
ments here are a clear illustration of the mixed messaging that the
government is giving in its efforts to carry out a significant policy
change while showing respect for established societal expectations.
An additional source of ambiguity is the fact that the definition
of socially accepted safety is not explicitly fixed, so that the idiom
can potentially be stretched to encompass different meanings. It is
clear that for many, perhaps the majority of Japanese society, the
idiom anzen-anshin indicates very similar ideals to zero risk. For in-
stance, in a newspaper article entitled ‘‘Provision of anshin, multi-
ple [food safety] criteria, public’s perception and in search of
appropriate standards’’ (Asahi, 2012), the manager of the risk man-
agement unit of a national supermarket chain pointed out, ‘‘For a
retailer like us, winning the trust of the public means making ef-
forts to obtain the goal of zero risk in food in our stores’’. Japanese
culture is weighted to expect zero risk, and to put the burden on
those who declare food safe to determine that it is, in fact, com-
pletely safe. Statements by public officials make it clear that the
government is aware of these expectations. Meanwhile, there is
no indication that the public is aware of a shift in the risk manage-
ment approach, even though drastic institutional changes and pol-
icy revisions have been made – as evidenced by the fact that so
much information about the risk analysis approach is being dis-
seminated throughout various governmental institutions.
Although the risk analysis approach in fact represents a significant
re-thinking of priorities vis-à-vis the traditional model, this fact is
not being effectively communicated to the public. The incomplete
shift between the two models is not only a matter of inconsistent
messaging; it has demonstrable concrete manifestations in the
implementation of policy. For example, in the case of the BSE test-
ing program, the national government has in fact withdrawn fund-
ing for blanket screening but the local governments continue to
carry out the program, at great expense, in the name of satisfying
public expectations. The discrepancy between the direction of offi-
cial food safety policy and the pressures created by the social imag-
inary of food safety could hardly be more stark.
Conclusions
This paper has argued that the concept of a social imaginary
combined with an arena theory helps us to understand some of
the challenges we face in contemporary agrifood governance. The
analytical framework presented in this paper enables us to gain in-
sights into phenomena which have previously gone unnoticed. The
social imaginary in which Japanese people are accustomed to think
of food safety has an expectation of zero risk and a specific assign-
ment of responsibilities – the government and/or industry are
responsible for proactively ensuring that things are safe. The risk
analysis approach apportions some responsibilities to consumers,
but this idea, as well as the idea that perfect safety cannot be
achieved, does not accord with the Japanese public’s idea of com-
mon sense. The Japanese government is attempting to communi-
cate these new ideas but is also trying to couch things in socially
and culturally accepted terms such as anzen-anshin, thus express-
ing a new model in the terms of the old one, with the result that
the message is unclear. At the same time, while the government
now recognizes that the ideal of zero risk is unachievable, that
ideal continues to create difficulties, not only at the level of policy
statements but in the actual carrying out of policy, as evidenced by
the blanket screening for BSE being carried out in Japan and the
discordance between national and local policy in that regard. These
phenomena indicate that Japan faces concrete trouble in the imple-
mentation of public policy, brought about by the shift in agrifood
governance.
The case study for this paper portrays an important social dy-
namic that has implications beyond the specific situation in Japan.
As we have seen, the idea of zero risk can function not merely as
one point on a scale of risk – the extreme end – but as a part of
a social imaginary with its own set of expectations and assumed
responsibilities and social roles. Once a social imaginary that incor-
porates the ideal of zero risk is established, if and when a new pol-
icy must be introduced, we may find that the shift between models
is neither straightforward nor automatic. We may find, as in the
case of Japan, public agencies issuing unclear communications, lack
of clarity about responsibilities, and even a certain amount of
chaos in implementation as different agencies or levels of govern-
ment attempt to operate within the different models and meet
very different sets of expectations. In particular, the no-win sce-
nario confronting public agencies in Japan points out a general
danger inherent in the adoption of an ideal such as zero risk. Once
such an expectation of zero risk has become established as part of
the social fabric, even if it turns out that the expectation cannot be
met, no agency will wish to appear irresponsible or lose the trust of
the public by repudiating the ideal. Thus, attempting to be socially
and culturally appropriate can potentially mislead the public, ulti-
mately resulting in confusion and loss of the public’s trust. While
the notion of anzen-anshin is a construct that pertains specifically
 T. Yamaguchi / Food Policy 45 (2014) 167–173
to Japanese society, the difficulties faced in moving away from a
zero risk model remind us that the conceptual formulations and
scientific standards with which we think about food safety do
not consist only of dry technical specifications, but function as
threads within a much more complex social fabric that may not
easily be re-woven.
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