Permalink : http://hdl.handle.net/2115/63582

A contemporary policy target of food administration in Japan is to recover firmly the social trust for food that was lost once during the BSE crisis and illegal labeling syndrome. The ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan is attempting to develop coherent traceability network in order to rebuild the labeling system. It would be fundamentally difficult to encourage the voluntary commitment of maintaining properly the trust that has public good attribute among the market stakeholders. Any social mechanism to deter free-rider problem should be prerequisite. In addition, the advance of modern food system is likely to raise an information incompleteness problem due to the longer distance 'from farm to table'. It is more difficult to determine specifically a point of hazard contamination. One apparatus is the conformity assessment system that has been developing toward further globalization since the WTO/TBT agreement. Traceability and auditing are important elements in the assessment system. A steady growth of LPLC (Local production and local consumption) business and a rapid spread of traceability are altering the distribution structure of agricultural products in Japan. Such deals based on the face-to-face principle might have regressive influence against large scale distribution that has been developing nationally during the post-war period. Several trials are independently ongoing to introduce such a quality management system as ISO9001 together with assessment of conformity for agricultural products. GAP (Good Agricultural Practice) is one of measures that put the system into practice. A good practice with certification system containing of documentation, record, monitoring, and auditing would provide an adequate incentive to keeping honest business. An actual problem is a business design how to apply the practice to small local farmers. A group application is more suitable to operate the practice by assemblers like agricultural cooperatives rather than individual farmers.