Food Safety in Jeopardy

Six years after the scandal of dumpling made in China, Japan seems to have caught up with China in terms of deteriorated food safety. Aqri Foods Company, a subsidiary of Maruha-Nichiro Holdings, announced that it would be recalling 6.3 million packs of frozen food delivered from a factory in Gunma, because malathion, an ingredient of fertilizer, was detected from some of them. The company doubts a possibility of intended injection of poison by someone. The Japanese can no longer deride anxiety of Chinese foods.

The announcement was made following a number of reports that had accused strange flavor of the products these months. In the investigation of Aqri Foods, the poison was specified as malathion. According to the company, that was not a material existed in the factory, the fact that indicated a possibility of crime.

The company recalled ninety kinds of frozen foods including pizzas, pancakes, croquettes or gratins. Since Gunma factory has been the main force for the company, the products, including licensed goods for major retailers, had been distributed to all over Japan. Aqri estimated total amount of the cost for retrieving to be ¥1.3 billion.

Japan would have been a country extremely sensitive for food safety. When ten people suffered from dumpling made in China six years ago, the people showed hysteric response to Chinese foods. Exacerbated by longtime skepticisms about vegetables, meets or fish from China, Japanese people were furious about management in factories in China. Against the delay of information disclosure by Chinese government, the people accused China of failed oversight of the government.

Chinese government found the incident as resistance of a factory worker who had been frustrated with his low wage. However, it was last July when the trial of this case started. It is possible that the government of China has been buying time for appeasing Japanese public. Time schedule of the trial is still not clear. Consequently, a lot of people turned their back to the foods from China.

The same thing may happen on Japanese food products, if the government of Japan cannot make thorough investigation in Aqri case. In spite of strict regulation laid for all kinds of products, foods in Japan have little transparency in terms of where they came from. Companies can always conceal information about foods with deliberated effort of disguise. There was a series of scandal of fake origin in foods in luxurious hotels this year. It is not only imported foods, but also domestic foods, that is losing confidence of consumers.