WTO Tells Japan It Must Open Its Market to Foreign Apples
An international trade body has ruled that Japan improperly impedes the entry of foreign-grown apples, a finding that could mean $100 million in new business for California and other West Coast fruit farmers.
The Geneva-based World Trade Organization concluded this week that Tokyo’s costly, time-consuming apple-testing regulations lack scientific merit and should be disbanded.
Japan has long frustrated foreign farmers with its complex inspection, fumigation, quarantine and handling regulations. Japan says these are necessary to keep foreign pests out of an island nation. Foreign trading partners say the rules amount to blatant protectionist measures designed to shield inefficient farmers from the global economy.
The WTO decision is expected to directly benefit U.S. apple, walnut, cherry and nectarine exporters and indirectly help a host of other growers facing their own unique Japanese standards battles.
“This is good news for California because what we want . . . is that rules should be transparent and based on sound scientific data,” said Ann Veneman, secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture.
At issue is a Japanese requirement that each apple variety entering Japan--the West Coast alone produces more than 80 types--must be tested separately, even though previous tests on other apple types have already shown that measures are effective against, in this case, the coddling moth pest.
Japan has said it will appeal the WTO decision. “There’s still one more chance for us to argue this issue,” said an Agriculture Ministry official. “Japan strongly believes that each type of apple needs different inspections based on science.”
But privately, even Japanese officials concede that the game is over and suggest that they will now use the next several months to work out new procedures.
“They have to do a melodramatic performance for their local constituents,” said Scott Hitchman, Japan director of the Washington State Agriculture Department.
The Liberal Democratic Party, which has ruled Japan for most of the last 43 years, is strongly beholden to rural voters. Predictably, those constituents are none too happy about the news.
“We are extremely disappointed,” said a government official in Aomori Prefecture, which produces half of Japan’s apples. “We don’t think the current inspection system is too harsh.”
Japan’s appeal is expected to take six months. If the decision is upheld as expected, Japan will have approximately a year under global trade guidelines to implement the rule changes. American produce marketers say U.S. apples affected by the decision could be on supermarket shelves by the fall of 2000.
Some industry groups say the change could allow U.S. apple growers to carve out a $100-million slice of Japan’s $1.6-billion industry. But to do so, U.S. grower groups have some homework to do.
Meeting the rigorous standards of Japanese consumers, some of the most demanding on Earth, is at least as important as getting past the bureaucrats. It’s also an area where American farm groups have not always done so well.
Apples in Japan are large, nearly perfect and quite expensive, and farmers meticulously wrap each piece of fruit protectively while it’s still on the tree. Top-quality Mutsu apples are sold in department stores for as much as $5 each, carefully wrapped and generally sold for dessert. This may partly explain why the Japanese eat less fruit per person than almost any other developed nation.
U.S. Red and Golden Delicious apples entered this market in late 1994. The Japanese don’t particularly like the Delicious varieties, however, which some U.S. officials say explains why Japan let them in. The American launch subsequently turned into a public relations disaster, however, when chemical traces were found on the fruit just as exchange rates forced prices higher.
The results are seen in the numbers. In 1994, just after the ban was lifted, the U.S. exported 9,000 tons of apples to Japan. This dropped to 800 tons the following year, 200 tons in 1997 and almost nothing this year.
Even New Zealand, which has shipped the preferred Fuji variety to Japan for the last three years, has run into marketing and quality problems.
Although Washington and Oregon apples have received most of the attention in the protracted Japanese apple battles, California apples could be a big beneficiary if and when the market opens up. California produces high-quality Fuji and Gala varieties, which are well suited to Japanese taste buds.
According to the California Food and Agriculture Department, every $1 billion in agriculture exports supports 27,000 jobs.
“A lot of people don’t realize the significance of exports to their jobs,” the department’s Veneman said. “The international marketplace is very important.”
Etsuko Kawase in the Tokyo bureau contributed to this report.
* THE ORANGE TOMATO: New beta carotene-rich tomato varieties have been developed. C2
* U.S. FRUIT BANNED: Australia has suspended the import of fresh fruit from America. C2
