Australia has moved to reassure consumers that food imported from Japan was safe to eat, saying the chance of products being affected by radiation was 'negligible'.

Food Standards Australia New Zealand, a bi-national government agency, said people should not be so concerned.

"At the present time, Australia's food standards regulator considers the risk of Australian consumers being exposed to radionuclides in food imported from Japan to be negligible," it said on its website.

"Any processed Japanese food on supermarket shelves in Australia would have been imported before the earthquake and is therefore safe to eat," it said, adding that no extra restrictions on Japanese food were in place.

The government agency warned that this statement should not be taken as the official stand of the nation on Japanese imports.

The food regulator represents Australia and New Zealand the statement did not refer to the latter nation's stance on Japanese imports.

Product Safety

Bloomberg News reported that the Japanese government is risking a food scare by failing to clarify where produce is contaminated and stopping some shipments, said Toshihiko Baba, a spokesman for the Central Union of Agricultural Co-operatives in Japan, which represents more than 4.8 million farmers.

Radiation levels found in food so far aren't harmful, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano said.

Japan's nuclear safety agency said the nation will limit distribution of spinach and milk after samples from the area near the plant 135 miles (220 kilometers) north of Tokyo were found to have higher-than-normal radiation levels. Spinach sampled at Hitachi, 97 kilometers south of the plant, contained 27 times the government limits for Iodine-131, according to the health ministry. That spinach won't enter the food chain.

"Food-borne radiation will last longer than airborne radiation," Gregory Hartl, a spokesman for the World Health Organisation in Geneva, said in an interview, and quoted by Bloomberg. "Even smaller amounts of radiation in food could potentially be more dangerous because you ingest it."