In a bid to ease consumers' fears over food safety, Japanese retailer Seven & I has revealed that it is to grow its own vegetables in partnership with farmers in Chiba Prefecture, east of Tokyo.
The vegetables will be sold at the group's Ito-Yokado stores, with the aim of combatting the wariness surrounding food in the country following the high-profile Chinese dumpling scare earlier in the year.
'Most of the vegetables we sell are already Japanese made, but our consumers' needs are shifting more and more towards domestically produced goods, so we are responding to that,' a Seven & I spokesman told Planet Retail.
