China investigates insecticide-tainted dumplings that sickened 10 in Japan

The Chinese government on Thursday said it had stopped production and exports from a company whose insecticide-tainted frozen dumplings sickened 10 people in Japan, in the latest crisis to tarnish China's food export business.

Officials from China's export safety watchdog said a swift investigation was being conducted into products from Tianyang Food Processing.

Japan's health ministry reported at least 10 people were sickened after eating the imported dumplings. Health ministry official Makoto Kanie said they had received other complaints, but none could be clearly linked to the dumplings.

Japan's Kyodo news agency, citing its own count, put the number of people who complained of illness at more than 400 but said it included people who had eaten other products by the company.

Officials from China's export safety watchdog said they were testing ingredients used by Tianyang but had found no signs of contamination in dumplings from the same batches as those blamed for sickening people in Japan.

"We are very concerned about the health of the Japanese consumers and we hope that they will make an early recovery," said Liu Deping, spokesman for the General Administration for Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.

China's reputation as an exporter has taken a beating in the past year following the discovery of dangerous chemicals in products from toothpaste to toys. Japan is one of the top three importers of Chinese products.

China last year announced a series of measures to boost product supervision and declared a four-month quality and safety campaign that ended in December a success. With the Beijing Olympic Games less than 200 days away, authorities have pledged rigorous measures to ensure safe food supplies.

The dumplings in this latest case were found to contain traces of an organic phosphorus insecticide called methamidophos, which caused severe abdominal pains, vomiting and diarrhea, Japanese officials said.

Liu said the company has been stopped from producing, selling and exporting its goods, and a recall has been issued for its products.

However, he defended the company's record, saying it had been manufacturing food products for more than 30 years and had strict quality control measures.

"Overall, we think this company's products are reliable in quality and safety standards," Liu told reporters.

Telephone calls to Tianyang, based in the northern city of Jinzhou, and its parent company, Hebei Foodstuffs Import & Export Group, were not answered.

Japanese government spokesman Nobutaka Machimura appeared to blame the dumpling contamination on "rather loose safety awareness on the Chinese side."

However, Chinese officials said tests on pork, cabbage and ginger used in the Oct. 1 and Oct. 20 dumpling batches blamed in the illnesses — as well as leftover dumplings themselves — had shown no sign of the insecticide.

Japanese health officials found the insecticide only in the dumplings eaten by those taken ill, but not in other dumplings from the same batches, said Wang Daning, head of the Chinese administration's import and export food safety department.

Wang refused to speculate on how the contamination occurred.

Three people in Hyogo and seven in Chiba, near Tokyo, were sickened, some of them seriously, including a 5-year-old girl who regained consciousness after falling into a coma, Japan's Health Ministry said.

Japanese health officials said they had suspended imports of all products from Tianyang and were conducting a nationwide survey of any additional dumpling-related health problems.

The Health Ministry also ordered the dumplings' importer and distributor, JT Foods Co. Ltd. — an affiliate of Japan's largest tobacco company — to recall the tainted dumplings.

Japan in recent months has been hit with its own domestic food safety scandals involving recycled red bean filling, mislabeled meat and the use of outdated milk, cream and eggs in a popular brand of cream puffs.

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Associated Press writer Mari Yamaguchi in Tokyo contributed to the story.