Japan's food under scrutiny, crisis 'in hands of God': EU
Guenther Oettinger - Photo EC
(BRUSSELS) - The EU urged countries to check Japanese food imports for radiation as the bloc's energy chief Wednesday criticised Tokyo's handling of a nuclear crisis he said was now "in the hands of God."
The consumer advice, issued via a rapid food safety alert system on Tuesday, requires governments that conduct controls to inform the 27-nation European Union should radiation on a product exceed authorised levels.
The controls would apply to a "small quantity" of products, said the European Commission spokesman for health issues, Frederic Vincent, noting that the EU imported 9,000 tonnes of fruits and vegetables from Japan in 2010.
The EU also imports a small quantity of fish.
As Japan scrambled to prevent a nuclear meltdown, European energy commissioner Guenther Oettinger voiced surprise at the "incredible makeshift" means being used to stop the disaster at the Fukushima No.1 power plant.
"The site is effectively out of control," Oettinger told a European Parliament committee, a day after he said Japan was facing "apocalypse".
"In the coming hours there could be further catastrophic events which could pose a threat to the lives of people on the island," he said, warning that the situation was now "in the hands of God."
Japanese crews have been dumping water on the stricken power plant, which has been hit by a series of explosions after Friday's giant earthquake knocked out reactor cooling systems.
"We are very much concerned and deeply distressed at the pictures we are seeing from Japan, and we are not yet at the end of this sequence of tragic and far-reaching disastrous events," Oettinger said.
The EU official criticised the response of Japanese authorities, pointing to "divergences" between the Japanese firm Tokyo Electric Power and the government.
"There are issues of engineering competence and we have to adjust some of our views of Japanese capacities in the area of precision engineering," he said.
"The Japanese are working with fire pumps, trying to dump water by air, they don't know how to resolve this situation anymore," he said.
The ever-evolving crisis has raised public concerns about the safety of nuclear energy in Europe, where governments have agreed to test the ability of the continent's 143 reactors to withstand earthquakes, floods and even terrorist attacks.
The EU's Hungarian presidency has called an extraordinary meeting of energy ministers for Monday to assess the impact of Japan's nuclear emergency.