Japan to draw up guidelines for wild game-processing vehicles

January 26, 2018

Nagano- Japan's Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare is drawing up guidelines for using vehicles to process wild animals into dressed carcasses after they are killed by hunters, Jiji Press learned Thursday.

By preparing the guidelines, the ministry is aiming at further promoting the use of wild game, or "gibier," as it is known in France and Japan, informed sources said.

The draft guidelines will be announced at the Japan Gibier Summit to be held in the southwestern city of Kagoshima on Saturday.

A so-called gibier car was jointly developed by the Japan Gibier Promotion Association, based in Chino, Nagano Prefecture, central Japan, and Nagano Toyota Motor Sales Co.

The vehicle is a remodeled two-ton truck with an exterior washing area, a butchering chamber and a cold storage room on its loading platform.

In the butchering chamber, hunted animals undergo primary processing, such as removing their insides, to turn them into carcasses and are placed in the cold storage room, where the temperature is kept at minus 5 degrees Celsius or below. This enables the game to be carried in a hygienic manner to facilities for secondary processing and turned into food products.

The draft guidelines will require the skinning process, currently conducted in the butchering room, to be carried out in the washing area and stipulate the amount of water needed to be used to wash an animal, the sources said.

The ministry plans to provide municipalities across Japan with the guidelines probably in March or April, after soliciting public comments in February at the earliest, the sources said.

Users of gibier vehicles are required to obtain a license for meat-processing business. In addition, local government ordinances and guidelines will have to be revised to allow the distribution of the processed meat.

With no unified rules in Japan, only Nagano, Aichi, Tottori and Kochi prefectures have decided to allow the use of the vehicles so far. Jiji Press