In order to ensure food safety, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare revised 7 articles under the Food Hygiene Law in June 2018. Among these, the systematic implementation of hygiene management in accordance to HACCP is an important pillar.
In Japan recently, due to the progression of woman's social advancement and an increase in the number of elderly and one-person households, the degree of dependence on eating out and ready-to-eat meals (HMR: Home Meal Replacements) has increased and in accordance the food market has expanded its restaurant services and home-delivery food services as well.
Looking at the number of food poisoning incidents occurring over the past 10 years, there have been approximately 1,000 and the number of patients has remained at approximately 20,000, with more than half of these incidents having occurred at restaurants.
According to statistics on food poisoning from 2017, the number of incidents was 1,014 with the number of patients being 16,464. Food poisoning incidents caused by bacteria were 449 cases (44.3%), food poisoning incidents caused by parasites were 242 cases (23.9%) and food poisoning incidents caused by viruses were 221 cases (21.8%). The majority of cases were caused by microorganisms.
In terms of the number of incidents broken down by etiological agents, Campylobacter jejuni/coli was the most frequent cause (320 cases), followed by the parasites Anisakis (230 cases) and Norovirus (214 cases). The number of patients was observed to be in the occurrence frequency order of Norovirus (8,496), Campylobacter jejuni/coli (2,315), and Clostridium perfringens (1,220).
The three principles of food poisoning prevention are known to be: "do not attach”, "do not multiply”, and "eradicate”. However, attention must not be paid only to the hygiene management of employees, cookware and facilities but also to the handling of food. Additionally, since viruses do not grow in food products, these need to be further managed so as not to be introduced (health management) or spread (HACCP, clean, wash, disinfect).
