Japan lifts beef ban for Miyagi but Fukushima on hold

Rina Mitsutake eats a piece of beef strip at Japan's restaurant chain operator Zensho Co's Gyuan barbeque restaurant in Yokohama, south of Tokyo July 27, 2011.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan on Friday partially lifted its ban on cattle shipments from Miyagi prefecture but kept its ban on beef from Fukushima after excessive levels of radioactive caesium were found, underscoring worries about food safety following the world's worst nuclear crisis in 25 years.

Concerns have grown over the safety of food supplies after a March 11 earthquake and tsunami crippled the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant, spreading radiation over a large swathe of northern and eastern Japan. Excessive levels of radiation have been found in vegetables, tea, milk, seafood and water.

The government last month halted shipments of beef cattle from Miyagi and Fukushima after finding that livestock had eaten straw contaminated with radioactive caesium stemming from the leaks at the plant.

"We have put in place steps for securing the safety (of cattle shipped from Miyagi)," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told a news conference. "But this is only a partial lifting of the ban to allow shipments under a controlled environment."

Shipments from Miyagi will be allowed on condition that cattle are tested for radiation contamination, while the Miyagi prefectural government will be responsible for eliminating tainted feed, Edano said.

As for cattle from Fukushima, the government needs to wait "a few more days" to decide whether to lift its ban, a farm ministry official said.

The decision comes after beef from a cow shipped from Fukushima in April was found on Friday to contain radioactive caesium exceeding the government-imposed ceiling of 500 becquerels, the official said.

As the radiation scare lingered, one cattle farm operator that has gone bust due to heightened consumer wariness about beef faced angry investors at a creditors' meeting on Friday.

"I don't want to pronounce the amount of money that I invested. I'll just say it is an incredible sum of money," said Norio Nakazawa, a retired 68-year old who attended the meeting held by Agura Bokujo.

The company, which had run about 370 farms nationwide through a franchising operation, now owes a combined 420 billion yen ($5.4 billion) to more than 73,000 investors.

"I was thinking of backing out of the firm last year after outbreaks of foot-and mouth disease, but I thought it would recover with time. I still think it would've been okay if the accident at Fukushima had never happened," Nakazawa said.

Prefectural governments have also been testing locally grown rice to determine if the country's staple food contains levels of radiation above safety standards.

Tests showed on Friday that rice samples in Ibaraki prefecture, some 75 km (45 miles) south of the Fukushima plant, contained low levels of radioactive caesium, but they were still below the limit, prefectural official Nobuo Aihara said.

Other rice tests in areas including Niigata and Chiba have shown that the rice has been free of radioactive substances.

($1 = 76.570 Japanese Yen)

(Additional reporting by Yuko Takeo and Natalia Konstantinovskaya; Editing by Chris Gallagher and Alex Richardson)