Tea Bottles Laced With Weedkiller
Just days after a bottle of green tea sold at a supermarket in Tokyo was found to contain herbicide, a similar incident involving the exact same chemical has occurred in Hyogo Prefecture:
The bottle in question was one of a batch of about 330,000 produced on Jan. 23 at the Coca-Cola West Products Co. factory in Akashi in the prefecture, and had a sell-by date of Nov. 9 of this year.
The Hyogo prefectural police detected glyphosate–which is a component of a herbicide used widely in the nation and causes diarrhea and vomiting when consumed–in the tea after examining the bottle’s remaining contents.
Suspecting the substance might have been deliberately added to the tea, the police are investigating possible forcible obstruction of business and causing bodily injury.
In both cases it was determined that other bottles of the same tea did not contain any herbicide, and in the bottle found in Tokyo is said to have had a loose bottle cap. It doesn’t look to be a question of unsafe practices by the manufacturers, so no product recalls have been issued.
