Rat Poison Suspected In Mass Illness - More than 40 dead, hundreds ill in China: China Masking Information

Sept. 16, 2002

The official Xinhua news agency reported that 400 people, many school children and construction workers, were poisoned at a breakfast shop in the town of Tangshan, and 41 had died.  

BEIJING, —  Rat poison may be to blame for a mass food poisoning that killed 41 people and sent hundreds to hospital near China’s central city of Nanjing at the weekend, state media reported on Monday.

 “INITIAL INVESTIGATIONS indicate there was rat poison in the food that was served to victims,” the China Daily quoted Zhou Qiang, a Jiangsu provincial government spokesman, as saying.

 The paper said doctors treating the victims said their symptoms were consistent with rat poisoning and Zhou said it could have been put in the breakfast snacks deliberately.

 The official Xinhua news agency said on its Web site on Saturday 400 people, many school children and construction workers, were poisoned at a breakfast shop in the town of Tangshan, and 41 had died.

 It later reverted to an earlier story saying 200 were poisoned and dropped the toll, saying only that a number of people died. Zhou was quoted by the China Daily as saying the death toll was “less than 100.”

 Locals who had seen scores of ambulances, however, estimated that more than 100 had died and some said on Sunday they saw victims bleeding at the mouth and ears.

 Authorities had held for questioning the boss of the Heshengyuan Soy Milk chain store, which sold food including sesame cakes and fried dough sticks.

 China’s cabinet and the Communist Party’s Central Committee, which oversees national policy, sent a team of police and health officials to investigate the case, state media said, highlighting concerns in Beijing about bad publicity in the run-up to a key leadership transition expected later this year.

 Food poisoning deaths have sometimes occurred in China from restaurants using cheaper industrial salts instead of edible, supermarket salt. Food poisoning killed 146 people and affected more than 15,000 others last year in China. Many of these incidents were due to rat poison, chemicals and bacteria, state media have said.

http://www.msnbc.com/news/808284.asp