A housewife in Hachioji, Tokyo, fell sick when she ate green beans that were imported from China and then sold at her local supermarket. Two more people in Kashiwa, Chiba Prefecture, also came down with similar symptoms after eating green beans from packages with the same lot number as those in the Hachioji case.

In January, it surfaced that three families in Chiba and Hyogo prefectures became sick from eating gyoza dumplings, also imported from China. Both the dumplings and green beans were imported and sold frozen. The gyoza incidents have not been solved. It is imperative that both Japan and China deepen cooperation to ensure the safety of food imported from China.

The Hachioji woman and the two Kashiwa residents had symptoms of nausea, vomiting and difficulty in breathing. The Hachioji health office detected 6,900 parts per million of dichlorvos, an organophosphate insecticide, or 34,500 times the government standard of 0.2 ppm for imports. It says that a 60-kg person can develop acute symptoms just by eating 0.07 gram of green beans containing 6,900 ppm of dichlorvos.

A total of 265 tons of frozen green beans were imported in the past year. The supermarket chain bought about 50,000 packages, with the process number GH01H011QS, at wholesale and have sold about 38,000 packages at 331 supermarkets in and around Tokyo and in the Tohoku region. The green beans, grown in Heilongjiang Province, were washed and frozen by a company there on Aug. 1, 2007. Its parent company in Shandong Province packed the green beans July 7, 2008, and then shipped them. Both companies say they do not use dichlorvos.

In the Hachioji case, the Metropolitan Police Department says the discovery by investigators of a 1-mm-diameter hole in a piece of the package that the victim had cut off with a pair of scissors increases suspicions that somebody deliberately tampered with the package to put the insecticide inside it. Japanese and Chinese investigative authorities should push cooperation by sharing all information that they uncover. This will strengthen mutual trust between the two countries.