Highly concentrated pesticide detected in Chinese-made frozen beans

TOKYO, Oct. 15 Kyodo - An extremely high concentration of insecticide has been detected in frozen green beans imported from China, and one woman who ate some of the beans bought from a local supermarket became ill, a municipal government in Tokyo said Wednesday.

The Metropolitan Police Department said it is looking into the possibility that
the frozen food was deliberately contaminated.
Nichirei Foods Inc., the importer of the product, said the organophosphate
pesticide dichlorvos was not used at the farm that produced the beans and the
factory that froze them, both in China.
The police said the package at the woman's home had no other signs of being
opened except for the cut that was made when she opened it with scissors.
The public health office in Hachioji city said Wednesday it has detected in the
beans 6,900 parts per million of dichlorvos, or 34,500 times the maximum level
allowed by the Japanese government for imports.
The level of concentration was close to that of an undiluted solution of the
pesticide, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare said. With the level of
concentration detected, a person weighing 60 kilograms may develop acute
symptoms if around 0.07 gram is consumed, it said.
The beans were produced by Yantai Beihai Foodstuff Co. in China's Shandong
Province, and imported by Nichirei for sale under the ''Ingen'' brand.
The government is warning consumers who may have bought the product not to eat
them.
Prime Minister Taro Aso told reporters Wednesday evening, ''We need to
reinforce quarantine'' in the wake of the latest incident.
Japan will ask China for improvement after details of the incident become
clear, he said.
The latest case comes on the heels of the still-unsolved cases of frozen
dumplings tainted with the agrochemical methamidophos that sickened three
families earlier this year in Chiba and Hyogo prefectures.
A total of 265 tons of the bean product has been imported in the past year, the
ministry said, adding that it has also ordered quarantine offices nationwide to
withhold import procedures for all food products from the Chinese company.
The 56-year-old woman bought the product Saturday, and thawed and ate some the
following day, according to the health office. She vomited due to a foul taste
and smell, and later felt numbness in the mouth and nausea, it said.
She was rushed to a hospital in Machida city in Tokyo for treatment and her
condition improved in two to three hours, the health office said. She was
discharged Monday.
The police said they also detected the chemical in the remainder of the beans
that was not used for cooking.
She bought the product at an outlet of the Ito-Yokado Co. supermarket chain in
Hachioji, according to the public health office.
Seven & I Holdings Co., the parent of Ito-Yokado, said the outlet in question
sold 46 packages that day and traced the buyers for 39 of them.
The product was sold at a total of 331 stores of Ito-Yokado and its affiliates
in Tokyo, its vicinity and the Tohoku area in northeastern Japan.
Ito-Yokado withdrew the product from the shelves of its outlets, including
those of affiliated supermarket chains and began recalling the product.
The health ministry said the insecticide chlorpyrifos was also detected in
frozen Jew's mallow, a leafy vegetable, produced by Yantai Beihai in 2002 and
exported to Japan. The concentration was 0.15 ppm, a level considered not to
cause immediate health problems to humans, it said. The product was then
destroyed.
==Kyodo