Fukushima discharge row: Hong Kong restaurants will not be compensated if city bans Japanese seafood, environment chief says

Secretary for Environment and Ecology Tse Chin-wan on Saturday explained that industry operators had been warned over the possible ban and given ample time to prepare.

“We deliberately notified the catering sector early on so restaurants would have more time to look for providers outside the prefectures facing our ban and maintain their businesses accordingly.”

Representatives of Japanese restaurants earlier lamented businesses had already been hit, with some warning up to 30 per cent of eateries serving the cuisine could close.

“We have no special subsidy plans at this stage. But since very early on, we have maintained close contact with the industry to let them know which areas face bigger risks, so they can prepare,” Tse said in a televised interview.

The city government said it would impose an import ban on aquatic products from 10 prefectures in Japan if the country pushed ahead with its plan to discharge more than 1.3 million tonnes of treated nuclear waste water into the sea over the next three decades.

Apart from Tokyo, the other prefectures are Fukushima, Chiba, Tochigi, Ibaraki, Gunma, Miyagi, Niigata, Nagano and Saitama, with the ban covering all live, frozen, chilled, dried and preserved seafood, sea salt, seaweed and other derivative products.