AFP - Friday, October 24
TOKYO (AFP) - - Japan's Nissin Food Products Co. said Friday it was recalling half a million cups of instant noodles over fears of insecticide contamination in the latest food safety scare to rock the country's consumers.
A 67-year-old woman vomited and felt numbness on her tongue after eating Nissin's Cup Noodle this week in the Tokyo suburb of Fujisawa, the city's health office said late Thursday.
The product was made at a Nissin factory in Japan. A series of previous scares have involved food imported from China.
The health office said on inspecting the Cup Noodle they had discovered paradichlorobenzene, the key chemical in bug repellent, but no puncture or other abnormality in the cup.
Nissin was voluntarily recalling around 500,000 cups made on the same factory line the same day, a company spokesman said.
They were sold at supermarkets in Tokyo and neighbouring areas with most of them already gone from store shelves, he said.
"We apologise for causing trouble to Cup Noodle lovers," Nissin president Susumu Nakagawa told reporters late Thursday.
However, he denied the possibility of contamination at the factory, saying it had never used or stored the insecticide and had seven security cameras watching manufacturing lines.
"It is unthinkable that the contamination occurred at our production lines," he said.
The noodles scare spread Friday as another company, Myojo Foods Co. of Tokyo, said it found instant noodles laced with paradichlorobenzene and naphthol, also used as bug repellent.
A man "poured in hot water and noticed chemical smells," said a health official in Yososuka, southwest of Tokyo. The man was unhurt as he did not eat the noodles.
Nissin, based in the western Japan city of Osaka, created instant ramen noodles as Japan's economy grew rapidly after World War II. Aimed at busy people on the go, it has since become a multibillion-dollar industry.
Japan has been on alert after a series of health scares involving food, mostly made in China.
Earlier this month one woman fell sick after eating frozen green beans imported from China, which were found to contain thousands of times the permissible level of pesticide residue.
http://sg.news.yahoo.com/afp/20081024/tap-japan-food-safety-noodle-d1078a1.html
NB
Seems like everything we eat contain one kind or another kind of poison.
Knn, don't you ever sleep?
Originally posted by charlize:Knn, don't you ever sleep?
Werid why noodles and insecticide got linked up...I though insects wont act on instant noodles as they are being processed.?
No insect repellent found in Nissin, Myojo cup noodles in Singapore
SINGAPORE: Singapore's Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA)
says its laboratory tests have found no traces of the chemical
paradichlorobenzene in the Nissin and Myojo cup noodles here.
The chemical is used as an insect repellent.
On Friday, Japan's Nissin Food Products Co. recalled half a million
cups of instant noodles over fears of contamination after a 67-year-old
Japanese woman vomited and felt numbness on her tongue after eating the
noodles.
In the latest food scare, Japan's second largest meat processor Itoham
Foods Inc. on Sunday began recalling more than two million packs of
sausage and pizza products possibly containing toxic chemicals.
AVA has confirmed Singapore does not import food that contains meat products from Japan.
everywhere also got this now..
if not melamine its this.
e noodles here are mostly from Thailand and Hong Kong SAR