Your comments in this subthread are against the guidelines. Issues of food safety and environmental externalities are important, and thus need to be discussed in a respectful and earnest way, not an inflammatory and combative one. Please read the guidelines and make an effort to observe them in future, notably these ones:

Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."

Please don't fulminate. Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.

Eschew flamebait. Avoid generic tangents. Omit internet tropes.

Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I would say the downvotes are primarily because you are inferring a political purpose to the OP that isn't in evidence, and railing against it in a way that appears simply off topic.

"So, if I may be editorial as a Canadian: No." is a strange, nonsensical way to respond to a post titled "Price of rice in Japan falls below ¥4k per 5kg".

Complaining about it and sarcastically ascribing ideological positions to downvoters is probably not helping, either.