Japan takes South Korea to WTO over food import restrictions

Geneva

JAPAN launched a trade complaint at the World Trade Organization on Thursday to challenge South Korea's import bans and additional testing requirements for Japanese food after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster, the WTO said.

Japan says several measures taken by South Korea violate the WTO's sanitary and phyto-sanitary (SPS) agreement and Seoul has failed to justify its trade restrictions as required, the WTO said in a statement.

Details of the complaint were not immediately available, but Japan has repeatedly raised the issue in committee meetings at the WTO, where it has also voiced concerns about Fukushima-related trade restrictions imposed by Taiwan and China.

Japan's representative told the WTO's SPS committee in March that radioactive levels in Japanese food had declined substantially since the accident. It noted that the United States, Australia, the European Union, Singapore and Vietnam had all lifted or eased their Fukushima-related restrictions.

In October, the Japanese representative said the latest monitoring data showed levels of contamination in more than 99 per cent of food items were below standard limits, and there were strict measures to prevent the sale or export of any food exceeding those limits.

South Korea's representative told the same meeting that Japan had not provided it with sufficient data for an objective risk assessment.

Japan's representative also cited an assessment from the International Atomic Energy Agency in September which found its measures to deal with contamination were appropriate, according to minutes of the WTO committee.

Under WTO rules, South Korea has 60 days in which to deal with Japan's concerns in bilateral talks. After that Japan could ask the WTO to adjudicate on the matter. REUTERS