Hagoromo Foods Corp. announced Tuesday that it was removing some 33,000 cans of bonito from store shelves after it was discovered that they may contain shards of aluminum.
According to the company, the product in question is the nonoil version under the brand Sea Chicken Mild, which was manufactured at a subcontractor plant in the city of Yaizu, Shizuoka Prefecture, on April 9.
Due to a malfunction in the machine that puts the lids on the cans, a portion of the lids have broken, leading to pieces of aluminum about 4 cm long and 1 mm wide entering the cans, company officials said.
While the firm had received word from customers that aluminum pieces were in the cans in May, it did not remove the product, thinking it was an isolated incident. However, they reinvestigated after receiving a similar complaint from another customer in July, officials said.
The cans in question were shipped to Hokkaido and the Kanto, Kinki, Chugoku and Shikoku regions.