Dear HLPE-FSN team,
Thank you for the opportunity to provide comments. Please see the comments from the Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries of Japan below.
We would like to request that the following sections be deleted or reconsidered on page 50, "The Japanese chain 7-Eleven is currently the largest in the world, surpassing even McDonald's in the number of stores worldwide (Bianchi, 2009)."
The reasons are as follows;
The first sentence, "their food offerings often consist of high-fat and high-sugar foods, fast food, and other unhealthy options, which is why greater access to these types of businesses is often associated with higher obesity rates," is a description of convenience stores in general, and does not necessarily apply to individual convenience stores.
However, mentioning the name of individual convenience stores in the second sentence could be misinterpreted as if those convenience stores offer unhealthy products. If the report wants to mention that the number of convenience stores is increasing, the description should be based on data for convenience stores in general, not for individual convenience stores.
Regarding 7-Eleven convenience stores in Japan, which are individually named, we would like to introduce that they are actively working to achieve sustainability by pursuing food quality and safety, such as selling health-conscious products, developing environmentally friendly products, reducing CO2 emissions, and taking measures to prevent food loss.
Kindly please see the reference links below (English, Arabic, Chinese, and Korean are available):
Seven-Eleven Sustainability | Seven-Eleven ~ Close-by, Convenient ~ (sej.co.jp)
Pursuit of quality and safety｜Seven-Eleven ~ Close-by, Convenient ~ (sej.co.jp)
Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries JAPAN