New England Cable News’ Peter Howe visited Global Rescue on Wednesday to discuss with CEO Dan Richards the transport of food, water, medicine and other supplies to 200 of its clients in Northern Japan. Here is a transcript.

(NECN: Peter Howe, Boston/Brookline, Mass.) Citing fears of radioactive contamination from the Japan’s damaged nuclear reactors, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has banned imports of 11 types of produce and dairy products produced in regions near the Fukushima plants. 

Hong Kong said it won’t accept imports of Japanese meat, dairy, and fish unless Japan conducts tests on them. And in Tokyo, officials began urging parents of small babies and infants not to let them drink Tokyo tap water, after tests showed radioactivity in the water at levels twice what sets off alarms about thyroid cancer dangers for infants.

It all adds up to one more blow for struggling Japan, which has lived through an earthquake and tsunami that have caused a newly estimated $300 billion-plus in damage, and which with the still-raging nuclear power plant crisis now faces a crisis rippling through it agriculture and fishing industries and basic food and water supply networks…

…The Japan food concerns are being felt 8,000 miles away in Boston, where CEO Dan Richards of Global Rescue, a [crisis response] company, has been taking charge of getting safe supplies to about 200 employees of U.S. companies based in Japan.

Richards said he is not allowed to divulge the names of the companies that employ them but said, “We have, obviously clients that are concerned about consuming food and water in the places where there might be a radioactive danger … We’ve been actually bringing food, water, fuel, supplies and other things that are necessary to sustain life into these devastated regions.” Richards said that “getting ground vehicles into these places has been very tough” and often requires convoluted, circuitous routes to get around damaged areas. Global Rescue has already begun making arrangements to evacuate U.S. company workers from Tokyo and other parts of Japan if it turns out the radioactive threat to food, water, and air worsens.