100 samples — grinding up lemons, asparagus and even turtle meat in large industrial blenders

to test them for banned pesticides, antibiotics and other chemicals. The Yokohama center alone
tested more than 30,000 samples last year, about three times what the United States tested.

“We are the front line in protecting consumers,” said Yukihiro Shiomi, an inspector at the center.

The health ministry says Japan tested 203,001 samples of food last year and found 1,515 samples
that violated standards. The largest number of violations, a third, came from China, which
supplies about 15 percent of Japan’s food imports.

While there have been calls in Washington for stepped-up testing, there is also notable interest in
Japan’s new system for screening Chinese producers.

Introduced last year, the system is used only for spinach. But the program has been so successful
in eliminating quality problems that Tokyo plans to expand it to other types of food imports, said
Kazuhiko Tsurumi, deputy director of the health ministry’s import food safety office.

“The lesson from our success with improving the safety of spinach is that direct control of
producers is the best method for quality control,” he said.

Under the system, a number of Chinese companies receive licenses from the government there
allowing them to export to Japan on the condition that they maintain Japanese standards.
Currently, 45 Chinese companies are licensed to produce spinach for sale in Japan. The Chinese
producers must grow all their spinach on their own plots and not buy any from other producers.
This greatly reduces the chance of dangerous pesticides getting into shipments, Japanese officials
say.

While China has licensed exporters before, this system is more stringent, Japanese and American
officials say, in part because the health ministry helps to enforce it by allowing in products only
from licensed companies. By contrast, the United States, with its free-market approach, allows
importers to disregard China’s licensing system.

Japanese officials acknowledge that their system limits competition, allowing Chinese producers
to charge the Japanese consumer higher prices. But they say that this profit incentive also keeps
the Chinese companies adhering to Japanese standards — lest they lose their licenses. Tokyo
also requires Japanese importers to test every shipment of spinach for banned pesticides and
other chemicals.

The mandatory testing adds about $160 in costs to each shipment, the health ministry says.
Spinach now costs about $4 a pound in suburban Tokyo, two to two and a half times what an
American might pay, though most of that difference results from other factors, like Japan’s
archaic distribution system.

But the Japanese say that the controls solve a big challenge in importing from China: weeding
out unscrupulous producers, without hurting China’s many conscientious ones.
Yet, at a Summit supermarket in the Tokyo suburb of Mitaka, such steps have done little to
alleviate fears of Chinese quality problems, which have received intense media coverage here.

Sales of Chinese-grown produce are a tenth of what they were just five years ago, as consumers
embrace pricier Japanese products. The sense of security in domestic fruit and vegetables is
enhanced by the store’s practice of posting the names, addresses and even photos of local
farmers who grow the produce.

“I prefer the farmers’ faces,” said Yumiko Ishihara, a 38-year-old homemaker. “Buying Chinese
is like gambling with my family’s health.”