SHIZUOKA--The dust-up with France over tainted tea leaves took a twist June 21 when the Shizuoka prefectural government said the tea in question was green tea, not "genmai-cha," a mix of green tea leaves and brown rice, as announced the day before.
SHIZUOKA--The dust-up with France over tainted tea leaves took a twist June 21 when the Shizuoka prefectural government said the tea in question was green tea, not "genmai-cha," a mix of green tea leaves and brown rice, as announced the day before.
The French government reported June 17 that inspectors at Charles de Gaulle Airport detected 1,038 becquerels of radioactive cesium per kilogram in a shipment of tea from Japan, double the EU standard of 500 becquerels per kg. The export was identified as 135 kg of green tea, the prefectural government's economy and industries division said.
The Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries took responsibility for the mistake, saying it had mixed up teas made by a company in Omaezaki, Shizuoka Prefecture, and misinformed the prefectural government.
The company purchased unrefined dried tea leaves from this year's first harvest from another tea dealer in Shizuoka Prefecture, and refined them into a final product, according to the prefectural government. Shizuoka Prefecture has collected 1 kg in samples of the same green tea in stock at the company, which will be inspected June 22 at the Yokohama Quarantine Station of the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare.
An inspection at the quarantine station found only 66 becquerels per kg of the refined genmai-cha product, which was reported earlier as having exceeded the EU safety standard.