Ping!
The Yomiuri Shimbun
The Japanese Consumers’ Co-operative Union announced Tuesday that another organic phosphorus pesticide, dichlorvos, was detected in a package of Co-op Tezukuri Gyoza (Co-op handmade gyoza) sold at an outlet in Fukushima Prefecture in November.
The concentration of dichlorvos detected in the gyoza dough was 110 parts per million, substantially exceeding pesticide residue standards set by the Japanese government.
The gyoza was made by Tianyang Food Processing in China’s Hebei Province, which produced gyoza found contaminated with the pesticide methamidophos and sold in Hyogo and Chiba prefectures.
According to the union, a co-op member who bought the product at a Co-op shop in Kitakata in the prefecture on Nov. 10 complained it had a strong, oil-like smell. It was produced on June 3, a different date from those found contaminated with methamidophos.
All of the products in question were recalled from the store’s shelves after the complaint was filed.
After the gyoza poisoning scandal surfaced, the union on Monday checked the package of gyoza it had kept as an item that had been the subject of a complaint. The dichlorvos reading was far higher in the dough than in the filling, where it was present at a concentration of 0.42 ppm.
Dichlorvos, which is used as insecticide worldwide, was registered as an agricultural chemical in Japan in 1957. If it is inhaled or comes into contact with skin, it can cause nerve-related disorders.
After the complaint was made last year, the union asked JT Foods Co., which imported the products, to conduct tests for chemicals. But the test at that time detected toluene, xylene and benzene—not dichlorvos.
The union also said it received a report from its outlet in Sendai that a co-op member complained on Oct. 31 that the same product made on June 3 had a chemical-like taste.
The union subsequently asked JT Foods to check the product. Although it said a strong odor was detected from the package, not the dumplings, JT Foods said it could not determine the cause of the abnormality even after investigations were conducted at Tianyang Food Processing and the packaging maker.
(Feb. 6, 2008)