UMM...What kind of food poisoning would cause this?

[shell76]

Food Poisoning Kills, Sickens Scores in China, Many Students

Chinese health officials are investigating a food poisoning outbreak in the eastern city of Nanjing that may have killed nearly 100 people and sickened hundreds more, including many middle school students.

Government officials refused media requests for actual numbers of people stricken by the illness.

A newspaper known to have close ties with the Chinese government reported, however, that many of the victims were boarding school students who had consumed breakfast items including fried dough sticks, sesame cakes and glutinous rice bought from a nearby shop, reports the Associated Press.

After just a few bites, some of the students went into shock, spitting mucus and blood and falling to the ground unconscious, said the newspaper.

The AP says it wasn't clear if the poisonings were intentional or a result of spoiled food.

[girlwithsoul]

I read somewhere that it was rat poisoning.....I'll see if I can find that article again.

[suziebee20]

This came off Yahoo!

China has reported numerous cases of food poisoning in which restaurants tried to save money by using toxic industrial salts instead of table salt or cooks mistook rat poison or other chemicals for food ingredients. In July, a noodle shop owner in southern China was arrested on charges that he poisoned customers at a rival business by putting rat poison in its soup.....

...."Now we are clear it is a criminal case. The police will certainly question all related people for investigation," said a spokeswoman for the Nanjing city government, who would give only her surname, Wu. She declined to confirm details in the newspaper's account of the investigation.

[Widgetsx3]

Found this at Iwon: http://apnews1.iwon.com/article/20020916/D7M2P73G0.html

China Officials Suspect Rat Poison

Sep 16, 4:17 AM (ET)

By NG HAN GUAN

NANJING, China (AP) - Investigators suspect rat poison is to blame for a mass poisoning in eastern China that is believed to have killed dozens of people, a health official said Monday.

Authorities refused to release a death toll in Saturday's poisonings, traced to a snack shop in the rural outskirts of Nanjing. But state media suggested dozens of people might have been killed, including children, and more than 200 people were sickened.

Police were questioning the manager of a company that supplied food to the shop, the state newspaper China Daily reported.

"Examination of the samples sent from hospitals showed it's rat poison," said an official reached by telephone at the Jiangsu Province Epidemic Prevention Station. He wouldn't give his name.


A spokeswoman for the Nanjing city government denied Hong Kong newspaper reports that 41 people were killed, but she refused to release an official death toll. The spokeswoman wouldn't give her name.

China's Cabinet and Communist Party headquarters in Beijing have sent investigators to Nanjing and ordered "strenuous efforts" to uncover the cause, according to state newspapers.

Many of those affected were students at the nearby Zuochang Middle School and migrant construction workers, according to state media.

They became sick after eating fried dough sticks, sesame cakes and glutinous rice bought at a branch of the Heshengyuan Soybean Milk Shop, the reports said.

Students and teachers at the military-run Nanjing Artillery Institute also were sickened, according to teachers contacted by telephone at the Zuochang school. They wouldn't give their names.

People who answered the phone at the artillery institute referred questions to the provincial propaganda office, which refused to release any information.

Chinese authorities routinely suppress information about disasters and other events that might hurt the communist government's image.

Officials are especially anxious before a major Communist Party congress in November, when President Jiang Zemin is expected to step down as party leader.

The China Daily, citing unidentified sources, said dozens of people might have been killed, many of them children.

"It is really unbearable to see the young children dying right before my eyes and their parents crying desperately," the newspaper quoted an unidentified doctor as saying.

Many of those sickened were boarding students whose school provided breakfast bought from the Heshengyuan shop, the Ta Kung Pao newspaper of Hong Kong reported.

Students went into shock after taking only a couple of bites of food, spitting mucus and blood and falling to the ground unconscious, said the newspaper, which is close to Chinese authorities.

State television on Sunday showed children lying two or three to a bed in a hospital and others being treated in hallways. Other people being treated included elderly people and some wearing military fatigues.

Investigators on Monday were combing through the food-processing factory that supplied the shop.

A narrow street leading to the factory was closed at both ends, but reporters could see investigators in white gloves examining the ground outside.

The Zuochang school was closed and empty, with police posted outside the gates of its compound.

China has reported numerous cases of food poisoning in which restaurants tried to save money by using toxic industrial salts instead of table salt or cooks mistook rat poison or other chemicals for food ingredients.

In July, a noodle shop owner in southern China was arrested on charges that he poisoned customers at a rival business across the street by putting rat poison in its soup.

Fifty-seven people were sickened in that incident in the southern Guangxi region, but no deaths were reported.

[janelle]

No food poisioning--rat poisioning. They were killed. Yikes.:mad:

[denisemm]

OMG! That's horrible!

[Widgetsx3]

China Snack Shop Owner Executed

Oct 14, 1:47 AM (ET)

By TED ANTHONY

BEIJING (AP) - A snack-shop owner who confessed to killing dozens of people by poisoning food at a rival's store in eastern China was executed Monday, the government said, making a quick announcement about a case it had been reluctant for weeks to publicize.

Xinhuanet.com, the Web site of China's official government news agency, announced the execution in a one-sentence report posted on the section of its site devoted to news in Nanjing, where the poisonings took place.

China Central Television, in its national noon news broadcast, said Chen Zhengping's appeal had been denied by the Jiangsu High People's Court, clearing the way for his execution. China's Supreme Court also approved the death sentence, CCTV said.

Executions in China are typically carried out immediately after the final appeal.

The poisonings Sept. 15 in Nanjing killed at least 38 people and sickened up to 300 others, according to state television. Other reports put the death toll as high as 42.

Chen was sentenced to death Sept. 30 after a trial in the Nanjing Intermediate People's Court.

He was apprehended Sept. 16 aboard a train in Zhengzhou, a city about 370 miles northwest of Nanjing. He confessed a day later to spreading the poison at his rival's shop, according to Xinhua. He said he was resentful about the success of the competing shop.

Though anecdotal evidence suggests violent crime in China is on the rise, particularly against Chinese, the central government places great value in the country's international image as a safe place.

Authorities kept a tight lid on information about the poisonings and didn't release a death toll for four days. The Web site of the Communist Party newspaper People's Daily eventually said most victims were schoolchildren and two were soldiers from a nearby military installation.

China has suffered poisoning attacks in the past blamed on business rivalries or people with grudges. In July, a noodle shop owner in southern China was arrested on charges that he poisoned customers at a rival business by putting rat poison in soup sold there, sickening 57 people.

Tests on the Nanjing food identified the substance as a brand of rat poison called Dushuqiang, which has been banned for sale in China since the mid-1990s, according to the Nanjing Agriculture and Forestry Bureau. But the bureau said the poison is still widely available in rural areas from illegal producers.