Dumpling Debacle Spreads Fear over Chinese Food

Dumpling Debacle Spreads Fear over Chinese Food. February. 11, 2008 00:03. kong@donga.com iam@donga.com.

The debacle over pesticide-laced Chinese dumplings found in Japan has spread worry over the safety of Chinese food products, and promoted American and Japanese authorities to take preventive measures.

The New York Times says U.S. athletes for the Beijing Summer Olympics will have their meals shipped from their own country. The U.S. Olympic Committee has signed contracts with major American food makers like Kellogg and Tyson Foods to deliver 25,000 pounds of meat and other foodstuffs to China two months before the opening ceremony.

The committee will also make separate arrangements with Chinese suppliers to secure other foods.

Last year, caterers from the committee went to China to check the safety of the food there. A piece of chicken available at a supermarket was found to have a dangerously high level of steroids.

In addition to the committee’s findings, a series of food safety crises in recent years prompted the decision to give American athletes U.S.-made food. The food will be served at a separate facility for the more than 600 members of Team USA.

Chinese food is also under fire in Japan, with fear over their safety rapidly rising. The major Japanese daily Mainichi Shimbun surveyed 100 shoppers in supermarkets or department stores Thursday and Friday. Ninety-seven percent of them said they are “uneasy about food from China.”

The dumpling incident has halved the number of customers buying food products in Chinatown in Yokohama, which attracts hordes of tourists with its mass of Chinese restaurants.

Food chains in Japan are also posting signs saying “China-free.”

Skylark has stopped using processed food from China, and J. Front Retailing, a major Japanese distributor with large department stores such as Daimaru and Matsuzaka, will pull vegetables and frozen food imported from China from shelves.

The city of Unzen in Nagasaki Prefecture has banned processed Chinese food in all of its four school cafeterias.