Japan Press Weekly

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2023 June 14 - 20 [SOCIAL ISSUES]

Cross-party parliamentarians’ league formed to promote an organic school lunch program nationwide

An inaugural meeting of a cross-party parliamentarians’ league, which seeks to introduce an organic school lunch program in schools across Japan, took place on June 15 in the Diet building.

Japanese Communist Party member of the House of Representatives Tamura Takaaki, who was appointed as one of the group’s seven vice chairs, put forward a proposal calling for establishing a law aimed at promoting the use of organically grown foods in school lunches and conducting a survey of organic farmers.

Invited to the meeting, mayor of Chiba’s Isumi City, Ota Hiroshi, talked about the city’s efforts to introduce an organic school lunch program in public elementary and junior high schools. The mayor stressed that in order to achieve a wider adoption of this school lunch program, it is necessary to implement budgetary measures at the national and municipal levels.

The head of an NPO dedicated to the advancement of organic farming, Zenyukyo, Shimoyama Hisanobu, appealed for the need to insert the promotion of the use of organic foods in school lunches into the Basic Law on Food, Agriculture and Rural Areas.

At the meeting, lawmakers of the Liberal Democratic Party (Sakamoto Tetsushi) and the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan (Kawada Ryuhei) were elected as co-chairs of the 38-member cross-party parliamentarians’ group.