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Beijing now says it was the Japanese who poisoned Chinese dumplings

Thousands of people have fallen ill, and the blame is given to pesticide residue present in the famous specialty of Chinese cuisine. But now Beijing maintains that its investigations exclude that hypothesis, and that the poisoning did not take place in China.

Beijing (AsiaNews/Agencies) - It's all the fault of the Japanese, the poisoning of Chinese dumplings that sickened more than 3,000 Japanese fans of the well-known Chinese culinary specialty, many of them ending up in the hospital. This is the astonishing assertion made today by Wei Chuanzhon, deputy director of the Chinese office for quality control.

"The poisoned dumpling incident", he maintains, "is not a problem of food safety caused by pesticide residue, but an isolated and deliberate crime", and "it is extremely unlikely that it took place in China".

According Chuanzhon, the investigations carried out by Chinese researchers have not turned up any traces of pesticides in the dumplings, not even in the ones sent back from Japan.

The Japanese, for their part, are not satisfied by the assertion of the Chinese. "We would like them to show us scientific proof", replies Hiroto Yoshimura, the head of the Japanese police agency.