The Chinese Saga of Olympic Shame Continues -- Japan orders mass recall
of Chinese meat products/IHT
International Herald Tribune
Japan orders mass recall of Chinese meat products
By Martin Fackler
Friday, February 1, 2008
TOKYO: The government said Friday that at least 175 people in Japan were
sickened by insecticide-tainted dumplings from China, prompting
supermarkets to pull Chinese-made meat products from their shelves while
Tokyo pressed Beijing to improve food safety.
Newspaper headlines warned of a national panic as hundreds more people
complained of dizziness and nausea after eating dumplings and other
Chinese-made foods. As of Friday, a dozen Japanese food processing
companies said they had issued recalls for at least 59 meat products
im****ted from China, from beef jerky to ****k chops.
All those products came from the same Chinese company that produced the
tainted dumplings, Tianyang Food Processing in Hebei Province, the
Health Ministry said. While pesticide has only been found in the
dumplings, the ministry said it had halted sale of all the Chinese
company's products.
The prime minister and other leaders tried to reassure the public that
the steps were enough to ensure the safety of food in Japan, which
im****ts more Chinese food than the United States. But as public opinion
appeared at times to carry a tinge of hysteria, a half dozen large
supermarket and department store chains announced that they had taken
all Chinese-made processed foods off their shelves, even products not
made by Tianyang.
"We withdrew them just to be on the safe side," said Hisae Kajiwara, a
spokeswoman for the department store operator Daimaru.
The dumpling contamination appears the latest blow to global confidence
in the safety of Chinese goods, following recent discoveries of
dangerous chemicals in everything from leukemia medicine to toys. But
the reaction has been particularly strong in Japan, a heavily urbanized
country that im****ts more than half of its food supply.
The contamination also highlighted problems in oversight of Japan's own
food companies, which have recently been hit by a series of homegrown
scandals involving contaminated and mislabeled food products. The
company that sold most of the contaminated dumplings, Japan Tobacco, has
come under criticism for failing to begin the recall until a full month
after the first known illness, in late December.
Health officials also scrambled to explain how thousands of tons of
contaminated meat products were allowed into Japan, which is supposed to
have some of the world's toughest checks on im****ted food.
"We are doing all we can to get a grasp of the current situation and
plan countermeasures," Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda said.
"What's most im****tant now is information gathering and crisis
management."
In New York, the Japanese Consulate posted a warning on its Web site
that small quantities of the tainted dumplings may also have been
brought into the United States.
In Japan, the problem first became public on Wednesday, when JT Foods, a
unit of Japan Tobacco, the country's largest cigarette company, issued a
recall of frozen dumplings that the authorities initially said had
sickened eight people. Some of them were hospitalized for symptoms
including vomiting and stomach pain, which were severe enough to put one
victim, a 5-year-old girl, into a brief coma, Health Ministry officials
said.
On Friday, government officials raised the number of known illness cases
to 175 and ordered checks to ensure potentially tainted products were
not served in school lunches. According to the Health Ministry, the
dumplings contained an agricultural pesticide, methamidophos, which is
used in China but is not common in Japan.
Foreign Minister Masahiko Komura told re****ters that Tokyo was urging
Beijing to fully investigate the poisoning to avoid damage to economic
ties between the two Asian countries. The Chinese Embassy in Tokyo
issued a statement saying that the Chinese police were investigating the
case and that China was responding in "a spirit of responsibility toward
consumers."
Local media have given the matter intensive coverage, while restaurants
have posted signs and schools have sent letters reassuring parents that
they do not use the tainted products. Japan has had a series of scares
involving pesticides on Chinese products, starting with spinach six
years ago.
But the Health Ministry also clearly felt under pressure to explain its
handling of the dumpling contamination. The ministry has been criticized
for failing to stop a string of domestic food safety scandals involving
the sale of mislabeled meats, outdated sweet bean cakes and contaminated
milk.
Health Minister Yoichi Masuzoe, blamed Japan Tobacco for the slow
response, saying the company had failed to inform it when the first
illness cases appeared. The ministry said that the Tokyo city government
also learned of three people getting sick from dumplings in early
January, but took no action because Japan Tobacco said the illnesses
were just an isolated case.
Ryohei Sugata, a spokesman for Japan Tobacco, said it took time for the
company to realize that the illnesses in different parts of Japan were
related, and caused by an agricultural pesticide. Sugata said Japan
Tobacco had recalled 48,000 boxes of dumplings, worth some $95 million.
In all, the Health Ministry said it has ordered the halt of sales of
3,845 tons of mostly meat products made by Tianyang.
International Herald Tribune Copyright (c) 2008 The International Herald
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