Food Law under the Rising Sun. The Japanese perspective.

This article analyses food safety in the Asian continent, with a particular focus on the Japanese situation and a comparison with other systems. After food scandals such as the Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) outbreak, Japan reacted by approving new provisions for food safety, such as the establishment of new legislation and a new administrative organisation centring on consumers, based on risk analysis. In particular, the article will scrutinise the main legal provisions actually in force in Japan in an attempt to map similarities and differences with other legal systems, in particular the Chinese system and the European one.