Made-in-China food safety issues continue to plague the international market: first there were tainted dumplings, then tainted milk, and now tainted beans. One woman in Japan was hospitalized after eating beans produced by the Chinese company Yantai Beihai Foodstuff Company, imported by Nichirei Foods, and sold in Ito-Yokado supermarkets.
Tests showed one package of beans contained 34,000 times the permitted level of dichlorvos, a highly toxic insecticide, Japan’s Health Ministry said.
The Chinese government immediately launched an investigation and ran sample tests that found no traces of pesticide.
“The company and its production base in the northeastern Heilongjiang Province have never used such a kind of pesticide,” said Mu Mingde, Yantai Beihai Foodstuff general manager.
Currently, Tokyo police are investigating whether the frozen beans were deliberately contaminated after leaving the Yantai Beihai Foodstuff Company, as a pinprick was found in the package that made the woman ill.
With the discovery of the hole, Japanese investigators increasingly suspect that the package’s contamination was deliberate, rather than accidental during the production process.
The Chinese government has cleared Yantai Beihai of any wrongdoing.
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
