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Some Chinese-made Dumplings Contain Insecticide: Panic Begins

After eating some gyoza for lunch today, I returned to my apartment to find that today’s top news story was about insecticide-tainted Chinese gyoza [not the brand of gyoza I ate today, thankfully]:

Five family members in Ichikawa, Chiba, were taken to hospital suffering from vomiting and diarrhea after they ate the dumplings, while another two women from Chiba and three family members from Takasago, Hyogo Prefecture, also reportedly ate the dumplings.

One of the family members from Ichikawa, a 5-year-old girl, was left unconscious in serious condition, while the other family members fell seriously ill after eating the dumplings, which were sold frozen through a consumer cooperative.

A survey by the Ichikawa public health center detected the insecticide methamidophos in the dumplings in levels that far exceeded normal standards. Police are investigating the incident, and are considering forming a case on suspicion of attempted murder.

Today is probably not a good day to be a company that sells Chinese-made frozen foods in Japan, as this incident will probably add to the growing perception in Japan that Chinese food imports are not safe.

{democracy:114}

Update: The Chinese are investigating these reports, and the story continues to dominate news coverage today.

19 comments - What do you think? Posted by James - January 30, 2008 at 9:57 pm

Categories: Japanese TV Tags: china, chinese, dumplings, food, japan, made in china, poison

andoroido

Of course I don’t trust any products from countries in which the consumer has no right to sue state-controlled production, so China is always suspect.

However, I find it very, very telling that the Japanese media/government team somehow find a way to create 2 stories of Chinese food (un)safety for every 1 story about JAPANESE food safety scandals.

Has any Chinese food scandal ever even come close to the scale of Snow Brand giving 10,000 people (at least) food poisoning?

I think I’ll stick to Aussie beef and American vegetables whenever possible.

Shaylee

Makes sense.

Futhermore, I’d like to point out:
Why doesn’t the quoted text mention China? I see Japanese words on the package ..
I’ve heard on the news that the U.S. is ~98.9% satsified with Chinese products. But I guess maybe China doesn’t use as much care with products going over to Japan?
I must find the rating for that sometime. Media usually only focuses on the poisoning news because who’d be interested in reading about good news, right?

http://www.japanprobe.com James

I can agree that the media likes to sensationalize things, but I can’t agree with the other outrageous/paranoid things you wrote.

Why doesn’t the quoted text mention China?

The quoted text doesn’t mention China because I mention China in my explanation before the quotation. The full article, which I linked, clearly states the food was produced in China.

I see Japanese words on the package ..

And?

The product is being sold in Japan, hence its label is written in Japanese. The Japanese text the video zooms is text stating that the product is from China.

I’ve heard on the news that the U.S. is ~98.9% satsified with Chinese products.

That sounds a bit high, especially after all the negative media coverage Chinese products have been getting over there. When I was in the U.S. for vacation last year, the news channels were overflowing with coverage of poisonous Chinese toys.

Here’s a recent survey that found that 65% of Americans haven’t stopped buying Chinese products:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/10/18/opinion/polls/main3380712.shtml

majiimeaussie

I recall reading about the 98.9% but thought it was the Chinese government saying 98.9% of products (or suppliers) tested were OK.

To me the value of 98.9% is worryingly low. Of every 1000 people that use a chinese product or eat chinese made food this would result in 11 problems. In a city the size of Tokyo that percentage works into the tens of thousands. Another example of context is if electricity worked 98.9% of the time we would be blacked out for an average of almost 16 minutes a day, which most people would consider unacceptable.
Shaylee

When I was in the U.S. for vacation last year, the news channels were overflowing with coverage of poisonous Chinese toys.

ha when you just said the media likes to sensationalize thing
i’d call your posts yellow journalism

stereo

If you want to know how often imported foods are rejected at the boarder because of found poison, look at this page.
http://www.mhlw.go.jp/topics/yunyu/1-4/0801.html
There were 19 rejections of Chinese imports in this January only, and they are based on just random sampling. By the way, there were 4 rejections of US vegetables, all of which are corns, in the same period.

You say; “However, I find it very, very telling that the Japanese media/government team somehow find a way to create 2 stories of Chinese food (un)safety for every 1 story about JAPANESE food safety scandals.”
This is not based on facts, but on your prejudice against Japan, which tells who you are. If you say it a fact, prove it.

People are upset not because poison is found but because the amount of the poison found in the food far exceeds what is thinkable to be residual insecticides left on the vegetable.
yenlaq

[CAUTION]

Its not just the bacteria..
IT IS INTENTIONAL POISON!!!!

This case is moore dangerous than te case of Snow Brand…

Everlasting

Is there any evidence of intentional poisoning, or is this simply shoddy manufacturing, or poor management? In recent years many of the “made in China” manufacturing scandals have been linked to a lack of sufficient managerial supervision on the part of foreign companies, of their localized production (for example the Mattel toys recall).

In the case of the Snow Brand food poisoning, the use of expired milk, the extension of expiration dates and the cover up were all found to be intentional. I wouldn’t underestimate it’s uproar however, because that in itself was an enormous scandal in quality-obsessed Japan.

More recently there was a large spat of Japanese manufactured food scandals, all of which seemed to lack the type of hysteria evident in Yenlaq’s “INTENTIONAL POISONING” post.

It’s always wise to remember that it’s very common for some types of hysteria to arise when dealing with the people or goods of another country. I remember the initial Japanese reaction to US rice for instance. There were numerous stories devoted to establishing the disgusting quality of US rice, even going so far as to “investigate” and “show” how insect-infested US shipments were. Japan already has one of the most admired and arguably one of the best systems for screening foreign food quality. As Japan increasingly relies on foreign manufactured food, one can only hope that level of scrutiny afforded to foreign products matches that of domestic products.

yenlaq

>>Everlasting

I know what you mean about japanese’s “China Allergy”
But on this time,I cannot take this case in the same way as a former(“snow”or “Use-by-date deception”) case.
Because the purpose of this case is beyond our imagination.
In the case of domestic(Japanese) products, every criminals committed deception clear motive for MAKING MONEY.
This poising is obviously intentional because of the quantity of poison. But this case, they get no profit by the poising. So they(the factory worker) caused this case with personal mischief or MALICE.

What do you want to say?
“China is safety”?
“Buy Chinese products”?
How should the Japanese protect our health?

Sorry in terrible English..
http://www.japanprobe.com James

yenlaq:

Have you seen any evidence that supports the idea that this was not just a case of vegetables oversprayed with insecticide? It sounds kind of unlikely that the company or its workers would deliberately put poison in food they are trying to sell.
ponta

As I read some articles, it is less likely that it was the case of vegetables over-sprayed with insecticide;if that is the case, it is more likely, they say, that sufficient heat will kill the poison.
An article lists the possible cause either as intentional or as the case where some insecticide used for pushing away insect from the factory was spilled someway or another into the food accidentally.
I am not really sure which,including James’ speculation, is true.
It is now under investigation.

This case caused more panic, I think, because some people lost consciousness after eating it, which was not the case with other Japanese similar food scandals.

http://nonplayercharacter.blogspot.com/ NPC

I was once eating some beans when I found a pea-sized(maybe a bit bigger) rock. The bottom of the can indicated they were from China… so yea… don’t really trust China too much.
morningstar

I started to check food package where there are manufactured before I buy now. I don’t buy if made in China. I hope the Dumplings were not purposely laced. I like to see the Japanese federal food inspection take care of this!
The Overthinker

Just saw on the news in Japan how they sent an undercover reporter to the rural areas and found the farmers still buying this “banned” substance as it was cheap and effective. Also close-up shots of grapes dripping with pesticide etc.

http://www.japanprobe.com James

Rural areas in China, or Japan?

The Overthinker

China.

http://japanheo.blogspot.com/ Charles Jannuzi

How did BSE get into the Japanese beef and dairy cattle populations? Most likely Japanese farmers using up banned cattle feed (with ingredients from the UK).

The mass hysteria over this particular gyouza incident does little to get at the heart of what makes industrial food production unsafe. It looks more and more like unsecure food handling in the distribution system, with a distinct possibility of intentional poisoning.
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Some Chinese-made Dumplings Contain Insecticide: Panic Begins

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