Japanese Police Say Pesticide Found in Package of Chinese-Made Dumplings

Text of report in English by Japan’s largest news agency Kyodo

Kobe, Feb. 4 Kyodo – Police said Monday they have found pesticide inside one of the six packages of Chinese-made “gyoza” dumplings recalled in Osaka in connection with a food-poisoning incident as well as from the surface of all the packages.

Hyogo prefectural police have been analysing the six packages as they were produced Oct. 1 with one that caused a family in the city of Takasago to suffer food poisoning last month from an organophosphate pesticide, called methamidophos.

The six are among 11 packages recalled from a supermarket store in Osaka’s city of Hirakata, but store officials said the same day they have sold to consumers the remaining 25 packages it received Dec. 27 along with the 11 from the wholesaler.

Although the store Happiece Hirakata said it has so far received no complaints or inquiries from consumers, local health authorities conducted an on-site inspection under the Food Sanitation Law and questioned store manager Masayuki Hashimoto, 46, and other people.

Meanwhile, the National Police Agency decided to gather investigators Tuesday from both Hyogo and Chiba prefectural police, where a total of three families have so far been affected by contaminated products, with a view to setting up a joint task force.

Japanese and Chinese government experts, meanwhile, continued working-level discussions a second day Monday in Tokyo over the food- poisoning incidents, while the Japanese side sent an investigation mission to China in the evening.

According to Happiece Hirakata officials, the supermarket returned the 11 packages made by Tianyang Food in China’s Hebei Province unopened via the wholesaler to JT Foods Co., their importer, after finding Dec. 27 that two of them had a sticky surface and unusual odor.

A cashier noticed the two packages around 1 p.m., prompting store employees to check nine others on the shelf and find similar abnormalities in around five of them, they said.

But of a total of 36 packages that arrived that morning at the store in three boxes, it continued selling the remaining 25 that had been kept on a truck and sold them that day, as well as 14 other packages that had arrived earlier, they said.

The gyoza packages were sold for 150 yen each that day as it was a weekly special discount day for frozen food products when they are sold at half the usual price, the officials said.

The three 12-package boxes were shipped to Happiece Hirakata from the five boxes the wholesaler bought Dec. 7, with the two other boxes being delivered to one or two of the seven supermarkets in southern Kyoto and Osaka prefectures with which it has business, according to the wholesaler.

By analysing six of the 11 packages recalled by JT Foods, the Hyogo police have also found two tiny holes in one of them as well as methamidophos in all of them.

Originally published by Kyodo News Service, Tokyo, in English 1045 4 Feb 08.

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