I was saddened to learn yesterday that Bill C-517, An Act to amend the Food and Drugs Act (mandatory labelling for genetically modified foods) was not passed in Canadian government.
This is especially saddening because 88% of the Canadian population (Reference Here) want to have generic modification labelling on their food yet the bill was defeated 156-101. With a government that is supposed to represent the people and 88% of the people agreeing (and rarely does the population of a country so unanimously agree on something), one would think that that such a bill would be passed.
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Over the Golden Week holiday here in Japan, I took 2 weeks off and did another cycling trip in Japan. This time I took the train to the southern portion of the Kii Peninsula to a city called Shingu, Wakayama Prefecture. Its a good place to start bacause its only one change of trains away from Tokyo. From there I went North through the mountains of Nara, Wakayama and Mie Prefectures though Osaka (by train Osaka to Tsurga, about 100km) and then along the sea of Japan coast as far as I could which wound up being Akita City in Akita Prefecture. The total was 1400km in 16 days which is not too bad.
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At the outset of this local diet I thought that one of the harder staple food items to find might be flour. Some of the people who tried to do the 100 mile diet in Vancouver, Canada, found that one of the hardest things to find was wheat (flour) and they missed it a lot. I also assumed that a lot of the wheat in Japan would be imported from aboard (from places such as Canada).
While searching the web a couple of days ago I found the website for a company called Maeda Foods (link (Japanese), but only to a small website that sells the flour through Rakuten, a website that hosts poeople’s shops), that sells flour from Kanto (the area of Japan in which I live). Kanto entirely fits within the 200km radius that I set up so this was a good first sign.
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In order to try and get as much food as I can from with 200km of Tokyo, I need to know how far 200km from my house is. One unfortunately thing about living in Tokyo is that about half of the 200km is water. I will have to wait and see how well the tracking for where fish is caught is, but I doubt it is going to be very useful.
I have plotted out how the area covered on the map below (click on it get a larger image). It covers all of Tokyo, Chiba, Ibaragi, Yamanashi, Kanagawa, Gunma and Tochigi prefectures. 95% of Nagano and Shizuoka Prefectures (this is close enough that I will probably allow anything from these 2 prefecturs to count as within 200km), half of Fukushima prefecture and about a third of Niigata prefecture.
This basically sets out from where I can buy things, here in Japan a lot of items (especially veggies) are labelled by what prefecture they are from, so this should be a good start.
I have decided to make a genuine eat more locally.
I have defined locally as with 200km of my house in Fuchu, Tokyo. Obviously the closer the better, but 200km seems like a reasonable distance especially considering all the “100 mile diet” (link).
Failing to be able to get products from with 200km, the goal is to get the items from within the main island (on which I live) and then domestically.
The primary reasons are 1) To be more environmentally friendly as in lower amounts of transportation is required. 2) to support more local and smaller farms and farmers as well as growning in the local community. 3) I will probably wind up eating a bit better as a result (less presevatives for shipping, more in season fruits and vegetables, etc)eat
I have absolutely no idea how hard it is going to be to try and accomplish this in Toyko, the largest metropolian area on the planet.
Brendan