Killer gyoza
Ten people in Japan have become seriously ill after eating gyoza (dumplings) imported from China that were later found to contain high levels of an agricultural insecticide.
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.
The gyoza were tested by Ichikawa health officials who found the insecticide methamidophos in amounts that far exceeded allowable levels in Japan
I saw a TV report on this story this evening during which a reporter called the company whose factory produced the dumplings. When the reporter asked the woman on the other end of the line for a comment, she became quite irate and said something like, “I don’t know what is being reported in the mass media in Japan so I don’t know what you are talking about.” The news show also said that a company representative told them it was impossible for such a thing to happen with their products.
Developing. . .
I’ll have to avoid that brand myself! I buy tons of frozen gyoza from my local Asian supermarket. Scary!
January 31st, 2008 at 12:21 am“It’s impossible for our products to be faulty - there has never been a case of Chinese goods being defective, after all!”
January 31st, 2008 at 4:21 amShould we regard “Made In China” as a warning label?
January 31st, 2008 at 5:05 amInteresting that the news I watched last night (Fuji) led with this story and laboured the point for about 20 minutes.
January 31st, 2008 at 11:05 amThen there were a few words about the gas tax kerfuffle in whatever time remained.
I’ve read in the newspaper today that behind this issue there is a problem of ” unregistered kids ” in China. Those kids were born as second(or third … ) child under one child policy in China and the poor parents didn’t register the child because they couldn’t afford paying for the fine of their second child. Those kids couldn’t go to school and do nothing but becoming uneducated poor farmers or employees.
The newspaper says there are about 200 millions unregistered kids in China. They have absolutely no idea about hygiene or environment. This food poisoning could be happened like : they found cockroach in the food at the factory and sprayed pesticide directly at the food.
January 31st, 2008 at 1:33 pmTo be totally honest, TU, as it’s pure speculation (no one yet knows how this happened), that looks like the newspaper taking an opportunity to raise another (and very probably unrelated) negative story about China.
January 31st, 2008 at 1:59 pmOf course, it might be a pure speculation, overoften. Even so, as the quantities of methamidophos in the Gyoza must have been rather much (according to the media), that story doesn’t seem completely unlikely to me.
Anyway, it looks like the issue of China is quite politically structured. Probably newspaper just wanted to suggest that. (Many Chinese use forbidden insecticide because they are uninformed, uneducated and so on.)
January 31st, 2008 at 4:52 pmUnless there’s some clear reason to link the two (and so far there isn’t), then it’s pure opportunism and points scoring from the newspaper.
January 31st, 2008 at 5:45 pmWhich newspaper was it, incidentally?
Apparently this scare has reached the states - at Mitsuwa this morning I saw a letter on the freezer case from Day-Lee Pride (日本ハム???) which assured buyers that Day-Lee Pride takes food safety very seriously and that their products are 100% safe.
February 1st, 2008 at 6:43 amIt may be opportunistic in tone, but it’s not based on unreasonable assumptions.
Chinese food is more dangerous than foods from developed countries, and it will be that way for a while. Who did I hear this from? Chinese people in the food business (as I was).
Even when there is so-called foreign oversight, there is widespread cheating. A stamp from a Swiss quality inspector tells you one thing - that the inspector was paid by the company whose foods he approved. Who did I hear that from? A Swiss quality inspector in China.
There is widespread ignorance of food safety standards. Even if those at the top are familiar with them, there are so many people on the bottom who aren’t.
With Beijing busy trying to keep 1 billion people from getting out of line, they don’t have the time or resources to influence to contain every single farmer, factory worker or migrant laborer.
All that said, probably 99.9% of the Chinese food you eat is just fine. But it’s still several times more risky than eating Japanese or US domestic.
So, you pays your money and takes your chances.
February 1st, 2008 at 7:59 amI’m not saying it’s an unreasonable assumption, and it would have its place in a private conversation. But in alleged news reporting it’s just cheap and tacky.
Obachan might gossip about an alleged wrong-doer “It’s probably because of his upbringing…” blah blah blah. But you’d only expect that sort of idle speculation in sub-Mainichi-type rag.
February 1st, 2008 at 10:58 amYou are right, overoften. It’s still under investigation and we don’t know yet how it happened. And there is certainly exaggerated bad reputation about Chinese meat products(or vegetables) in Japan and people are too much exited about the news.
I read the stories on couples of papers. Asahi Shinbun says ” The contamination occurred probably not from gyoza ingredients but in the manufacturing process, because the insecticide density was very high.”
Nikkan Sports or other tabloid paper (I don’t quite remember) says about ” problem of unregistered kids in China “. Sometimes the media tell speculation. Especially those tabloid papers often write cheap sensational stories. (But they could occasionally make us believe “hmm … it might be true”.)
February 1st, 2008 at 12:14 pm[...] weeks of sensational news reports about people across Japan claiming to have been sickened by consuming poison gyoza dumplings that were made in China, Japan’s Health, Labor and [...]
February 16th, 2008 at 8:01 am