China says no evidence beans in Japan contaminated

BEIJING (Reuters) - China has found no evidence that frozen beans pulled from the shelves in Japan were tainted with pesticide, the official Xinhua news agency said on Thursday as yet another health scare implicated Chinese producers.

Japan's Foreign Ministry summoned China's acting ambassador and urged Beijing to take all appropriate measures to ensure food safety, emphasizing that it had a direct effect on Japanese consumers.

One woman was briefly hospitalized with vomiting and a numb mouth after eating the green beans imported by Nichirei Foods and sold in Ito-Yokado supermarkets.

Tests showed the package of beans she had bought contained 34,000 times the permitted level of dichlorvos, a highly toxic insecticide, Japan's Health Ministry said.

Six other people have complained of ill health after eating beans from the same batch, Japan's Kyodo news agency said.

China said it had found nothing untoward.

"Sample tests carried out on Wednesday found no sign of pesticide residue...," Xinhua reported. "No abnormal signs were found in the beans' planting and processing procedures, the authorities said."

The Chinese Foreign Ministry said the products quality watchdog was inspecting the producing company in Yantai in northeastern Shandong province.

"According to initial results, the company is in accordance with standards and has no safety flaws," spokesman Qin Gang told a news conference.

Japanese police suspect the contamination was deliberate, because the beans were washed and boiled before being frozen, a process that would have diluted the pesticide if it had already been present, broadcaster NHK said.

Deputy foreign minister Seiko Hashimoto called in the acting Chinese ambassador and asked that the two governments stay in close touch over the issue, the ministry said in a statement.

The food scare emerged a month after a scandal over Chinese milk tainted with the industrial compound melamine, which killed four babies in China, made tens of thousands ill and forced product recalls around the world, including Japan.

Earlier this year, several Japanese were made ill by Chinese-made dumplings that also contained insecticide, but a joint investigation failed to reveal how the contamination occurred. Japanese media speculated that the dumplings had been deliberately contaminated.

(Reporting by Ben Blanchard and Yu Le in BEIJING and Isabel Reynolds in TOKYO)