Japanese red seabream prices fell this autumn, as South Korean demand plummeted, but domestic New Year demand should help.
South Korea banned all fishery imports from eight prefectures surrounding the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant on Japan's Pacific coast in September, in response to confusing reports about the level of contamination at the plant.
The straw that broke the camel's back was when facility operator Tokyo Electric Power Co. (TEPCO) said that it had detected radiation of 2,200 millisieverts an hour at a hotspot near a water tank. Shunichi Tanaka, chairman of Japan's nuclear regulation authority, who was trying to dampen fears during Tokyo's Olympic bid, then criticized TEPCO for releasing misleading data about the water leaks. He said the company should have used the unit "becquerel," which signifies the radioactivity level in the water, rather than "millisieverts," which measures potential human exposure.
As this confusion followed on a release of radioactive cooling water into the Pacific Ocean, South Korea then decided that Japanese data was inadequate and applied the ban. The ban takes in products from Fukushima and the seven other prefectures: Ibaraki, Gunma, Miyagi, Iwate, Tochigi, Chiba and Aomori, making up the northern half of the main island of Honshu.
Japan has asked South Korea to remove the ban, since fishing taken from the specified prefectures is tested for radioactivity before being approved for sale. The Japanese government is urging South Korea to take a science-based approach, rather than a knee-jerk response to consumer fears. In October, Japan asked the World Trade Organization's Sanitary and Phytosanitary Committee, which deals with food safety, to discuss the South Korean ban. South Korea's stance is basically that it no longer trusts the Japanese data. Sea bream is also farmed in South Korea where it is called "Ch'amdom."
Although most red seabream (madai in Japanese) is farmed in the Seto Inland Sea and in the island of Kyushu, far south of the affected area, and is therefore not banned, South Korean consumers have come to fear all Japanese seafood.
Some South Korean cafeterias serve sashimi or sushi of Taiwanese tilapia in place of sea bream, and Korean consumers tend to treat Taiwan-raised tilapia as sea bream. Despite a South Korean exposé TV program in October, in which Taiwan's tilapia farms were portrayed as operating in a polluted environment and overusing antibiotics, Koreans now prefer the Taiwanese fish to Japanese. The wholesale price for Taiwan-farmed tilapia has remained stable at about KRW 16,000 (about USD 15, EUR 11) per kilogram.
The price of Japanese red sea bream meanwhile has been gradually falling since September. The mid-November price at Tokyo's Tsukiji wholesale market was off 10 percent from the summer, at 800 yen (USD 7.70, EUR 5.61) per kilogram due to an oversupply.
However, sales should get a big boost from the New Year holidays, when it is traditional to serve a whole braised seabream. Staring at the seabream is supposed to bring luck and it is an essential part of the New Year table.
