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Dear reader,
Iâm a sucker for stories about solutions â particularly now, when so much in the world seems to be broken. So this week, I loved reading about the women in Japan who took matters of food safety into their own hands.
Freelance journalist Daniel Hurst reported for HuffPost U.S. on Japanâs Seikatsu Club, a food cooperative that housewives launched in the 1960s after a string of food safety scandals. Today, the cooperative boasts nearly 400,000 members (90 percent of whom are women) and is as relevant as ever.
Consumers who are still wary about the effects of the 2011 Fukushima nuclear power disaster flock to these women for assurance that the food theyâre buying is safe. Seikatsu Club products meets radiation standards twice as strict as the governmentâs â although, in a sign of how seriously members take their mission, they donât refer to their offerings as âproducts.â
âI found it interesting that Seikatsu Club â which has always seen producers as equal to consumers in the food supply process â is quite deliberate in the language it uses to describe what it sells,â Daniel said. âSeikatsu Club ... uses the term âshouhizai,â which means materials for consumption.â
Daniel also explained why women have always made up the bulk of the cooperativeâs membership. âWomen in Japan typically take charge of household finances and, while social norms are gradually changing, often do the bulk of grocery shopping,â he said. âAs my piece ... explains, a series of food safety scandals in Japanâs post-World War II industrial boom had eroded consumersâ trust in existing standards. The women involved in the Seikatsu Club were determined to take prompt action to feed their family safe food at an affordable price.â
And so they did, setting an inspiring example of what women can do when they decide to stop tolerating a problem.
Until next time,
Emily
For more solution-based stories, check out HuffPostâs This New World series, which highlights âprogress toward building a fairer world.â And sign up for its newsletter here.
For more on Japanâs Seikatsu Club, Daniel recommends this blurb from the Cooperative Economics Alliance of New York City and Michael Menserâs âWe Decide!: Theories and Cases in Participatory Democracy.â
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