494 People Suffer Food Poisoning

[Calltometal]

NATIONAL
494 people in 38 prefectures suffer food poisoning from 'gyoza'

Friday, February 1, 2008 at 06:44 EST

Shoppers inspect some frozen food at a supermarket in Chiba.

TOKYO — The number of people who have complained of feeling ill after eating gyoza dumplings or other products made by a Chinese producer has reached 494 in 38 prefectures in Japan, according to a Kyodo News calculation as of Thursday evening, as the government said the same day it would do its utmost to deal with the food poisoning outbreak. It has not been proved, however, if the claims of illness filed with public health centers or other institutions by most of the people are related to the pesticide earlier detected in one of the products.

The incident came to light Wednesday when 10 people in two prefectures were reported to have suffered or to be still suffering from symptoms of food poisoning after eating dumplings between December and January. The dumplings were made by Tianyang Food in China's Heibei Province, and imported and sold by JT Foods Co.

Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda, stressing the need to secure consumer interests, said the government "must rush" to take measures and expressed the need to review the channels of communications between related institutions. It took about one month before the first confirmed poisoning case in Chiba Prefecture was reported to the health ministry.

Health, Labor and Welfare Minister Yoichi Masuzoe, speaking at the day's parliamentary session, issued an appeal to consumers not to eat the products, which importers and firms have decided to pull from store shelves.

The health ministry, meanwhile, announced the names of 19 firms that have imported products other than dumplings from Tianyang Food as well as the names of the products. It is urging the firms through local governments to stop selling them.

"This is a life-threatening matter. The government must make utmost efforts to prevent further damage," Masuzoe said at the House of Councilors Budget Committee.

Senior officials from the Cabinet Office, the health and agriculture ministries, and the National Police Agency met Thursday morning and agreed to strengthen cooperation to prevent the damage from spreading and to look into the cause of the food poisoning.

Reports of illness connected to the dumplings began flooding local health centers across the country after the welfare ministry and police said Wednesday that at least 10 people suffered food poisoning in Chiba and Hyogo prefectures between December and January, with one of them temporarily falling into a critical condition.

Seven other people in Akita, Saitama, Kanagawa and Kumamoto prefectures were reported later Wednesday to be complaining of sickness.

Fresh reports involving hundreds of other people came in Thursday from Hyogo, Saitama, Kanagawa and 17 other prefectures, including Hokkaido, Aomori, Fukushima, Tokyo, Shizuoka, Ishikawa, Aichi, Kochi, Osaka, Fukuoka, Nagasaki and Okinawa.

Prefectural government offices across the country were busy checking the reports to see if they were caused by the gyoza dumplings or other products made by the Chinese producer.

Gyoza, or jiaozi in Chinese, are dumplings containing ground meat and vegetable fillings and are popular in Japan.

On Thursday, three more food firms announced they will pull food products made by Tianyang Food. The firms are Maruha Corp, Nippon Meat Packers Inc and Nihon Shokken Co.

Maruha, Nippon Meat Packers and Nihon Shokken, which are not among the 19 firms named by the health ministry, said their products use materials made by the Chinese producer.

Police said a pesticide was detected in the products imported by JT Foods and that it may have been mixed in the products either during the production or packaging process in China.

The case has rekindled fears about Chinese-made food products, following a series of similar incidents that have come to light since the spring of 2007.

JT Foods, an affiliate of Japan Tobacco Inc, announced that it would pull all food products made by Tianyang Food from store shelves.

Major frozen food company Katokichi Co also said it will withdraw 18 products from the same Chinese maker.

Police detected traces of an organophosphate called methamidophos in the packaging of the dumplings which has often been used in China as a pesticide but is banned for use in Japan.

Meanwhile, in Beijing, the Chinese government said Thursday preliminary tests carried out on samples of frozen dumplings linked to a food-poisoning outbreak in Japan have shown no traces of pesticide.

But the government has requested a Chinese producer of the dumplings to recall its products and is sending experts to Japan so the two countries can jointly investigate the issue, China's Foreign Ministry and the country's quality control watch dog said.

The government has studied samples from two batches of the product linked to the outbreak, made at a factory in the northern province of Hebei in October, but found no traces of harmful chemicals, Foreign Ministry spokesman Liu Jianchao said at a regular press conference.

"We urge Japan to provide more details to help with the investigation. We also hope that the Japanese consumers who have fallen ill quickly recover," he said.

An official of the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine said the government has required Tianyang Food, the producer, to halt production and exports after China was alerted to the problem by the Japanese authorities on Wednesday.

Liu Deping, deputy director general of the administration's general office, said at a separate press conference the producer is also tasked with recalling all of its products, both domestically and internationally.

The samples tested were from dumplings produced on Oct 1 and 20 last year, which were when the products consumed in Japan were made, according to the administration.

An investigator of the administration tested them in the early hours of Thursday and found no agricultural chemical that was believed to be the cause of the poisoning in Japan, the administration said.

-Kyodo News

[ngo_thien]

Awww crap, I think my friend recently bought that.

[den4]

just can't eat food anymore without worrying about artificial ingredients :P

[collegeboy]

ohh god,food poisoning is becoming an urban disaster

and when the country has a high population density,it's even worse...

[hashihime]

Besides the harm to people's health, the worst thing about this is how it may intensify Japanese' negative feelings toward China -- and how Japanese reaction may do the same in reverse. A government minister in Japan apparently said he thought the poisoning was intentional, as if Chinese were trying to poison Japanese. Not a very helpful statement.

In my opinion, the relationship between Japan and China will be the most dangerous in the world, for the next couple of decades. Chinese in China have been brought up to loathe Japan, and the conditioning seems to have worked. Japanese seem to me to have a lot of negative stereotypes about China: criminals, disorderly peasants, and prostitutes in slinky dresses. Both countries seem imprisoned in attitudes inherited from their grandparents' terrible experiences. If this doesn't change, both countries will reap the whirlwind.

[Nightshade]

yah this news was on almost everyday when I was in Japan. Its not exactly uncommon to hear health related risks from products that come from China. Even my friends from China say they don't trust food products from China.

I think in one news story they went and interviewed one of the farmers and they knew they were spraying their produce with the banned pesticide because it was apparently cheaper.

[DEPTHSING]

Besides the harm to people's health, the worst thing about this is how it may intensify Japanese' negative feelings toward China -- and how Japanese reaction may do the same in reverse. A government minister in Japan apparently said he thought the poisoning was intentional, as if Chinese were trying to poison Japanese. Not a very helpful statement.

In my opinion, the relationship between Japan and China will be the most dangerous in the world, for the next couple of decades. Chinese in China have been brought up to loathe Japan, and the conditioning seems to have worked. Japanese seem to me to have a lot of negative stereotypes about China: criminals, disorderly peasants, and prostitutes in slinky dresses. Both countries seem imprisoned in attitudes inherited from their grandparents' terrible experiences. If this doesn't change, both countries will reap the whirlwind.

yea...heard about that in the news. However, from what i heard, it was the chinese official that said the poisoning was intentional withh the objective of harming ties between the 2 nations. The japanese official refused to comment and warned against making conclusions too soon.

As for the bad relations between both nations, i believe it can be traced back to WWII. And up till now, chinese citizens are still playing up the emotions of their brethren by making and pubilcizing films abt the "rape of Nanking" with the japanese refusing to acknowledge the event. Their relationship has always been quite fragile and the food poisoning case will no doubt worsen it.