Japan to Start Test to Manage Game Meat Data with ICT

Tokyo, Oct. 12 (Jiji Press)--Japan's agriculture ministry will start in fiscal 2018 an experiment for managing information on game meat in an integrated manner using information and communications technology, in order to help people eat such meat, or "gibier" in French, without concern. Through the test, a traceability system covering the entire process from capturing wild animals and birds to processing and selling their meat will be created to eliminate consumer worries over gibier safety, ministry officials said. The experiment will be conducted at about 12 locations in the country. The ministry will provide local governments concerned with financial assistance to cover half of the related costs, the officials said. Based on the food labeling act, labels on game meat products currently show information on the facilities where they were processed. As the labels do not mention when and where the game was caught, however, some consumers are worried about what meat the products are made from. In the test, the ministry will support the installation of an ICT system that notifies the hunter's mobile phone when a beast or bird is caught in a trap or when the door automatically closes after it enters a cage, the officials said. The ministry will provide financial aid for local governments to introduce meat-processing facilities and vehicles serving as mobile slaughterhouses, they said. Using these equipment and facilities, data, including the time and date when the game was caught, and when and where it was slaughtered and processed, will be sent to a cloud storage system, they said. The ministry plans to use the existing traceability system, which manages beef and pork distribution information, for transmitting data on processed game meat to retailers. The ministry will also support the development of technology to connect the cloud system for the data in the capturing and processing stages with the traceability system for the distribution information management, to establish a unified data management system, the officials said. Through these processes, quick response, or QR codes, will be put on the labels for game meat products, enabling consumers to scan them to learn information, including on the type of animal, when and where it was caught, how it was caught, the gender, weight, the age and when it was slaughtered, they said. END