Masked workers of JT Foods Co., check packs of frozen
foods recalled at Sakai town in Ibaraki Prefecture,
near Tokyo, Japan.
Kyodo News / APArticle
Bite-sized potstickers are popular in Japan, but rarely are they food for political debate.
Since December, frozen gyoza (meat dumplings) produced by Chinese manufacturer Tianyang
Food Processing Ltd. have caused at least 10 people to become ill due to contamination by a
potentially lethal insecticide. The poisonings have fueled not only mounting suspicion of
Chinese food products but also a political kitchen fire that threatens to singe relations between
the two countries.
The food poisonings were announced on Jan. 30 by Japan's Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry,
a month after the first case was reported to a prefectural government. Ten people fell ill in Chiba
and Hyogo prefectures during December and January and according to the Health Ministry,
3,742 people have contacted health officials with inquiries or reports of illness after eating gyoza.
The initial 10 cases, however, are the only ones confirmed to be caused by ingesting the pesticide, methamidophos, which is not allowed in Japan and was banned in China at the beginning of this year.
JT Foods, an affiliate of Japan Tobacco, imported the Chinese-produced dumplings and has since volun-
tarily recalled the products from supermarket shelves. Japan Tobacco has posted an apology
on its homepage and has called off a proposed merger with Nissin Food Products, a deal that would
have created the industry's largest frozen-food importer. The government has listed 18 additional com-
panies that have dealt with Tianyang Food and is discouraging the sale of its products.
The food scandal could also poison historically strained ties between China and Japan. Colder than
a frozen gyoza during the tenure of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, thanks to his insistence on
visiting the controversial Yasukuni shrine honoring Japan's war dead, relations have thawed over
the last year and a half. Koizumi's successors, the short-lived Shinzo Abe and current leader
Yasuo Fukuda, have worked to strengthen and stabilize relations, in part because of Japan's in-
creasing economic dependence on trade with China.
So far, the two countries are keeping their cool and agreed Wednesday to continue cooperating
to find the cause of the poisonings. Fukuda, still smarting from a slew of controversies over mis-
labeled food last year, pledged in mid-January to focus his attention on the interests of consumers.
Former foreign minister Taro Aso suggested, somewhat flippantly, that Japanese thank China,
noting that the scare over foreign foodstuffs added value to local agricultural products.
A Japanese fact-finding mission met with Chinese quality control officials in Beijing on Tuesday
before conducting its own investigations, including a visit to the Tianyang Food factory in Hebei
Province. As of Wednesday, the mission found no problems at the factory that might suggest it
as the origin of the tainted gyoza.
China's reaction has also been conciliatory, possibly to avoid any more damaging product-quality
scandals — like last year's outcry over lead-contaminated toy exports — in the run-up to the
2008 Beijing Olympics. "If this incident turns into an international dispute, the image for the
Olympic Games is going to be bad," says Toshimitsu Shigemura, an international relations pro-
fessor at Waseda University. "If Chinese food is dangerous and people think of China as unsafe,
it will be a severe issue for them."
On Sunday, China sent five food safety and quality control officials to Tokyo to join a bilateral inve-
stigation into the poisonings. But while Beijing tries to soothe Japanese consumer anxiety,
Japanese Health Minister Yoichi Masuzoe said Tuesday that he suspects the poisonings could
have been deliberate; police are now treating the cases as attempted murder.
"Since the origin of the incident came from China, the Chinese need to work out some sort of
conclusion to this," says Shigemura. "The Japanese don't trust China right now — and they
expect some resolution."
Starting last Thursday, restaurants and supermarkets began pulling Chinese-made foodstuffs
from their shelves. Skylark Co., which owns the restaurant chains Bamiyan and Gusto, suspend-
ed the use of products processed in China at its 4,145 outlets across Japan — even though
none of them came from Tianyang Food. On Tuesday, Chief Cabinet Secretary Nobutaka
Machimura said that 606 public schools used food from Tianyang Food in lunches, although
no children have fallen ill. Education boards around the country have been asked to refrain from
serving food produced by the company.
But keeping schools, restaurants and supermarkets free of Chinese-produced food is nearly
impossible: China is the second-largest provider of food imports after COUNTRYTK, and frozen
products from China account for more than half of all those imported to Japan.
Rather than sacrifice their hunger for dumplings, Japanese prepared to make their own from
scratch are grabbing up gyoza no kawa — premade gyoza wrappers — faster than supermarkets
can stock them. Supermarkets are raising the cost of minced meat as demand soars, while sales
of frozen foods are plunging, with some stores slashing prices up to 30%. And to whatever extent
possible, consumers are scrutinizing labels to ensure that what they buy is not produced in China.
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