More than 1,000 sick in Japan tainted food case

This picture taken on January 4 shows police investigators entering the Gunma factory of Japanese frozen foods company Aqli Foods, a subsidiary of Japanese food company Maruha Nichiro Holdings, at Oizumi in Gunma prefecture, north of Tokyo.

AFP/DPA/Tokyo

More than 1,000 people have fallen ill after eating pesticide-contaminated frozen food as a scandal widens across Japan, Jiji Press reported yesterday.

People have reported vomiting, diarrhoea and other symptoms of food poisoning after eating products including pizza and lasagne made by a subsidiary of Maruha Nichiro Holdings, the nation’s largest seafood firm.

The number of people affected by the tainted food has now risen to over 1,000, with more than 200 taken ill in the northern main island of Hokkaido alone, Jiji said.

In western 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.

The concentration of the pesticide detected in part of a frozen croquette produced by the Japanese company was 2.6mn times higher than the acceptable level, news reports said yesterday.

The latest revelation came from Aqlifoods Company.

The croquette sample, made by the subsidiary of Maruha Nichiro, was found to contain about 26,000 parts per million of pesticide malathion, the Kyodo News agency reported, citing a local public official.

Detectives are looking at the possibility that the someone deliberately laced the food products at some stage of production at a factory in Gunma, north of Tokyo, Jiji said.

As of yesterday, 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 odours, a company spokeswoman said.

The food maker has recalled 6.4mn potentially tainted products, with 1.49mn packages recovered so far, she said.

None of the products in question had been shipped overseas, the company said.

Maruha Nichiro and Aqlifoods, based in Gunma prefecture north of Tokyo, found the highest level of residue in the breaded parts of frozen croquettes distributed in central Japan.

The higher level of contamination on the parts shows that pesticide was added after the frozen foods were produced, Kyodo reported, citing local authorities.

More than 900 people across Japan have complained of health problems after eating food that has been recalled due to possible pesticide contamination, Kyodo said.

In late December, Aqlifoods announced that some of its frozen food products were contaminated with malathion.

Maruha Nichiro said on Monday that it had received around 456,000 phone calls from consumers as of Sunday, after Aqlifoods recalled the approximately 6.4mn tainted frozen products on December 29.

Only 17% of the packs had been recovered by Saturday, the company said.

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.