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What would be your reaction if you were walking past a popular local restaurant and saw a sign inside a frozen-food display window saying: "All ingredients deep frozen - food not fresh!" - and a youth in a waiter's costume lying inside the window display, his gloved hands holding frozen vegetables?

It hasn't happened yet in Hong Kong but, since such incidents in Japan recently went viral across social media and since our young people are displaying numerous signs of deliberate bad behavior (i.e., "Occupy Central" campaign; insulting the CE to his face), there is a serious possibility such incidents could reach our shores, and sometime soon.

The scene portrayed above typifies several jaw-dropping stunts recently staged by young Japanese workers wanting to expose the real situation in some of their country's restaurants and food outlets. Most of these protests have involved breaches of food safety regulations; others have highlighted complaints about employees' poor pay and miserable working conditions.

The widely-publicized protests sent shockwaves through Japan's highly conservative social structure. It seems that, just as we are now seeing in Hong Kong, today's young Japanese have developed a rebellious streak, and realize that the more excessive their behavior, the more likely it is to get widespread media coverage. On top of which, they also enjoy freedom of expression via social media, still fizzing with the latest developments concerning their stunts.

In particular, the perpetrators are happy that the flood of bad publicity generated for their employers has caused serious problems for the food outlets concerned, with one operator being stripped of his franchise because of poor staff training and breaches of hygiene.

Since these events gained global exposure in English across the Internet, there is a strong likelihood that copycat incidents could happen at any time.

In general the conservative society of Japan believe the youths' actions are little more than cheap protests that amount to a form of blackmail, and would like to see offenders taken to court.

The business sector sees the stunts as harmful, because they can make food outlets go bankrupt, thereby upsetting the traditional harmony of everyday living patterns.

But the younger generation regards such actions as being fully justified, with some youths citing the perennial problem of cancer and questioning whether there might be a link between flawed preservatives and the insidious killer, a cure for which somehow still eludes mankind.

Tokyo's media has described the conduct of the young workers as "deplorable", adding that they "seem to be exhibitionists who want to attract others' attention in cyberspace".

But most fair-minded people would accept there were solid grounds for their antics. Let's face the truth about some of the food we consume every day, not fresh fruit or vegetables, but foodstuffs that are frozen, canned, packaged or otherwise preserved, sometimes for many months.

In this day and age the consumer would expect that great care was taken in the preparation of such foodstuffs, and that all international health and hygiene-related regulations were studiously followed to ensure that the items retained their goodness, and that any preservative employed was absolutely harmless to humans.

But we are all equally aware that the producers and suppliers of non-fresh food items are businessmen whose bottom line is to make a profit, and there is always pressure from the management to "cut corners" and adopt other money-saving short-cuts.

Such dodgy practices involve a worrying degree of risk. If and when offences are detected, such unscrupulous food suppliers rightly risk being prosecuted for breaking food safety regulations, and their products rejected by middlemen and customers alike.

But the risk to their customers is far greater, because their lives - or, far more seriously, the lives of their babies and children - are being put at risk.

In such circumstances, should the consumers of Japan therefore be thankful to these rebellious young "whistleblowers" in their food industry?

The author is Op-Ed editor of China Daily

Hong Kong Edition. albertlin@chinadailyhk.com

(HK Edition 10/04/2013 page9)