China widens import ban

China has extended the scope of its recent ban on food imports from Japan as Chinese officials sound concerns over the handling of the radiation leak at Fukushima nuclear plant.

China’s General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine has announced that it is now blocking entry of all edible agricultural products and feed from 12 areas of Japan, including Tokyo.

China had previously suspended access for fruit, vegetables, dairy products, seafood and other water products from five prefectures near the stricken plant.

The expanded ban came as Chinese officials expressed concerns over Japan’s decision to discharge some 11.5m litres of radiation-contaminated water into the Pacific Ocean. Japan last week began to discharge water contaminated with low levels of radiation – too low to threaten human health – to prevent a more-dangerous release at the reactor site.

China’s state-run news agency Xinhua last week reported that minute traces of radiation had been detected in vegetables planted on the Chinese mainland. While this was the first report that Chinese-grown produce had been affected by contamination, the Ministry of Health underlined that the levels were “not harmful to human health”. Low levels of radioactive iodine were found in spinach plants in the cities of Beijing and Tianjin and in Henan Province, but the amounts were between 0.1 per cent and 0.3 per cent of the legal limit.

China has struggled to ease public anxiety about the nuclear crisis triggered by the 11 March earthquake, with radiation fears sparking panic buying of salt in some Chinese cities last month.

However, spinach sales in Beijing do not appear to have been affected by the recent reports that iodine-131 was detected in domestically-grown spinach, according to the China Daily. The manager of Xinfadi Agricultural Products Wholesale Market in the Fengtai area of Beijing, the largest in the capital, told the newspaper that spinach sales remained stable, with no signs of panic or anxiety among customers, be it bulk buyers or individuals.