17 Japanese leading food corporations, including Ito smoked meat company, Nippon wheat flavor company have strengthened collaboration in developing and trading organic products not using chemical combination and agricultural drug in manufacturing materials.

As schedule, these enterprises are establishing a common standard for organic products on Japanese market from next September. It is considered as a method of Japanese companies to meet the consumers’ demand in guarantee for safe of organic food products which have had inputs and outputs controlled toughly.

The food safety standard submitted by the 17 companies is named Organic guide and will be applied to some kinds of product, such as rice, coffee, cooking oil bought on Japanese market from next September. In 2007, these companies will added more 20 – 30 kinds of product, such as smoked meat, candy, tea to the list applying this standard. In 2 or 3 years, the list will expand to several hundreds of products.

Prices of the products complying with this standard are expected to be twice as high as other products’. For example, organic rice price will be 800 yen per 1kg or organic noodle has price of 600yen per 500g (118, 29 yen = 1 USD).

Products that meet this food safety standard will be provided a certificate named “organic JAS”, which is similar to the food safety requirements of Japan’s Ministry of agriculture, forestry and fisheries (Japanese Agriculture Standard). “Organic JAS” mentions specifically ingredients that are not allowed to be used, such as agricultural stimulating drugs, combined chemical materials, gene modified materials. In addition, in the processing process, the companies applying this standard also have to comply with the common requirements of stringent food hygiene controlling system, which helps to analyze the concentration of combination that is unsafe for consumers’ health.