Outbreak investigators in Japan have identified contamination in a seaweed production plant as the cause of seven foodborne illness outbreaks that sickened almost 2,100 people in 2017.
The seven foodborne norovirus outbreaks were all attributable to dried, shredded seaweed called nori, according to a report from researchers in Japan and published in recent days by…
A Canadian company is recalling more than two tons of raw pork because it did not undergo proper inspections when it was shipped to U.S. retailers, restaurants and a U.S. Department of Defense Commissary.
Olymel S.E.C./LP of Alberta, Canada, recalled more than 4,600 pounds of raw, intact pork bellies, ribs, legs and feet, according to…
Japan health authorities are dealing with two new clusters of E. coli O157:H7 infections.
The first involves a suspended grilled-meat restaurant in Yokohama, linked to the illnesses of a teenage girl and a man in his 80s who ate there on July 30.
The second involves a deli in the Saitama Prefecture and a potato…
More than five years ago on Friday, March 11, 2011, the Great East Japan Earthquake with a magnitude of 9.0 set off a large tsunami sending a 50-foot wall of water over three Fukushima Daiichi reactors. Three of the nuclear cores melted down in the next three days. 
About 1,600 miles away on the next…
Food safety authorities in Hong Kong found trace amounts of radioactive cesium 137 in powdered tea imported from Japan last week, according to The New York Times.
The sample tested at nearly one percent of the legal limit for radiation and was not considered a public health threat. Regardless, the importer voluntarily recalled the …
A collaboration between two companies has developed a device for detecting radiation-contamination food. After an earthquake and tsunami damaged Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant in 2011 and caused a significant leak of radioactive material, RIKEN Global Research Cluster and G-Tech began researching methods for detecting radioactive cesium in food. 
The detector system…
Despite being the number-one producer and consumer of rice in the world, more Chinese citizens are buying rice imported from Japan and elsewhere due to fears about heavy metals and other toxins, according to Reuters. While the amount of rice imported to China from Japan in 2014 is still extremely small, it was triple…
McDonald’s Japan and Cargill Inc., one of the fast-food company’s chicken suppliers in Asia, are apologizing and trying to reassure the public after a customer at a McDonald’s outlet in Misawa, Japan, reportedly found a 1.5-inch strip of vinyl in an order of chicken nuggets this past weekend. “I am confident that my family can…
A local farming official in Fukushima Prefecture, Japan, said Monday that rice grown in the area of the 2011 nuclear disaster has passed that country’s radiation checks. Small amounts of the region’s approximately 360,000-ton rice harvest did not pass in 2012 or 2013 and had to be destroyed. 
Tsuneaki Oonami said that nearly the entire…
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is working with local officials to investigate a case of tetrodotoxin poisoning in Fairfax County, VA, which they suspect is linked to the consumption of imported puffer fish, according to a report from FDA. The patient under investigation received the puffer fish in a package from relatives in South…
