Seikatsu Club is a huge food cooperative, founded in 1965 by a group of women in Japan, which has exacting standards on everything from radioactivity levels to the number of additives in food.
Their initial focus was on bringing down the price of milk for households by securing bulk-purchase discounts. Fast-forward five decades and Seikatsu is now a sprawling operation of nearly 400,000 members (90% women) that runs its own milk factory and has food supply agreements with about 200 outside producers. In addition, some of the production is now done by workers collectives that are part of the cooperative.
Distrust in industrial food standards in Japan dates back decades. In 1955, a milk arsenic poisoning case was linked to the deaths of more than 100 children. Minamata disease, discovered in 1956, was connected to the release of mercury in industrial wastewater from a nearby chemical factory. And now the Fukushima power station disaster in 2011 has caused fears of radioactive contamination.
“People were losing trust in food,” says Yuriko Ito, the executive director of Seikatsu Club. Today Seikatsu’s biggest-selling items include milk, eggs and meat, although another favorite is the ketchup. Experts believe the hands-on involvement of members in setting and reviewing the food standards is key to the cooperative’s success.