Fattyacids
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AFP
Thursday, Jan 09, 2014
TOKYO - More than 1,000 people have fallen ill after eating pesticide-contaminated frozen food as a scandal widens across Japan, Jiji Press reported Wednesday.
People have reported vomiting, diarrhea and other symptoms of food poisoning after the tainted food, including pizza, croquettes and pancakes manufactured at a factory of Maruha Nichiro Holdings subsidiary Aqli Foods Corp in Oizumi, Gunma Prefecture last October and November.
The number of people affected by the tainted food has now risen to over 1,000, with more than 200 taken ill in Hokkaido alone, Jiji said. In Osaka Prefecture, a nine-month-old baby was hospitalised with vomiting on Monday after eating a product called creamy corn croquettes, the report said.
Police began investigating the company last month after it revealed some of its frozen food had been tainted with malathion, an agricultural chemical often used to kill aphids in corn and rice fields. Detectives are looking at the possibility that the pesticide was deliberately added to the food at some stage of production at the factory, Jiji said.
As of Wednesday, Maruha Nichiro has received about 630,000 phone calls from consumers in connection with the incident, including complaints from customers who had eaten tainted products and some reporting unusual odors, a company spokeswoman said.
The food maker has recalled 6.4 million potentially tainted products, with 1.49 million packages recovered so far, she said. None of the products in question had been shipped overseas, the company said.Maruha Nichiro used full-page ads in major newspapers Wednesday apologizing and warning consumers not to eat any of the tainted food. "The products will have a strong smell and eating them may cause vomiting and stomach pain," it said in the notice, which included 51 color photos of the problem products.
While food scares do happen in Japan-in August 2012 E. coli-riddled cabbage killed seven people and sickened dozens-standards are relatively high.
However, a much-vaunted reputation for safe and high quality food has been badly affected by the Fukushima atomic disaster, which saw acres of farmland polluted by nuclear fall-out and many countries restrict agricultural imports from the area.
The health ministry, in a notice on its website, said it ordered Maruha Nichiro to recall all potentially affected products and to be forthright in informing the public about the situation.
