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The story
It emerged that napa cabbage was being shipped after being soaked in a formaldehyde solution in Hebei Province, China. Japan’s Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare explained that it inquired with the Chinese government and received a reply stating that none of it was exported to Japan.
On 5ch, questions piled up over whether it’s really reassuring to ask the very party committing the wrongdoing and simply be told “there isn’t any.” Other posts described avoiding Chinese-made processed foods and pickles, explained the toxicity of formaldehyde, and brought up the past melamine-in-baby-formula scandal.
Cabbage Shipped After Being Soaked in Formaldehyde Solution — Discovered in China, “None Exported to Japan”
In Hebei Province in northern China, it was discovered that napa cabbage had been shipped after being soaked in the chemical formaldehyde.
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Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
What people said
Yeah, as if!
This is exactly why Japan's Health Ministry is hopeless.
The issue is processed foods.
Well, processed foods get treated beforehand, so there's probably not much residue left anyway.
That doesn't cut it — not from anyone with a shred of professional sense.
Nothing but anxiety here.
Do that and you'll have nothing left to buy.
Ever since that gyoza pesticide-contamination incident, I've made an absolute rule of never buying Chinese products.
Daiso's gummies are increasingly made in China now, but I refuse to buy them!
A lot of peanuts are Chinese too, but I refuse!
90% of store-bought jelly cups are made in China too, so I skip those.
Pineapple jelly I'll buy since some uses Taiwanese pineapple.
Mandarin orange jelly is 100% Chinese, so no thanks.
If formaldehyde is ingested orally, it causes severe corrosive damage to the digestive tract, plus acute systemic poisoning from the formic acid it's metabolized into in the body.
Aqueous formaldehyde solution is extremely toxic — even a small amount can cause serious, life-threatening harm.
I always throw out the pickles that come with bento boxes.
You wouldn't know if the country of origin were faked, though.
Restaurant chains probably fake it all the time too.
Of course they would!
Exactly this!
I'd like them to explain exactly how they "confirmed" it.
In 2008, the harmful substance melamine was found mixed into infant baby formula in China, causing kidney stones and other health damage in a huge number of infants and toddlers.
According to China's then General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (now the State Administration for Market Regulation), by September 17 melamine had been detected in products from 22 of the 109 raw milk powder makers investigated.
By the Chinese government's own count, the incident killed 6 people, and more than 300,000 infants suffered health damage such as kidney stones. Victims' families have voiced growing anger, saying compensation of 2,000 yuan per person (roughly ¥26,000, about $170) is far too little.
Suspend it for about a year until safety is confirmed.
China itself halted imports of Japanese seafood over a political dispute, after all.
Chinese goods, processed foods…
you'd have to be an idiot to trust them.
Re: #158
Agricultural products, processed foods —
a total import ban would be fine lol
What is this, a kid running an errand?
Even if their own investigation finds it's in there, they'll still tell us "we didn't put any in" lol
Cars made in China are scary too.
There was a case before where they used tar-based materials with benzopyrene and the owner got cancer.
Same with lead turning up in Chinese-made tableware, and carcinogens in clothing.
If one case gets exposed, there are probably around 100 more like it that never come to light.
Background and Key Points
Formaldehyde is a preservative and antibacterial agent long banned for food use in China under its Food Safety Law, but enforcement gaps have surfaced repeatedly since local vendors use it to keep produce looking fresh during transport from inland provinces like Hebei. Japan’s food-safety system relies heavily on this kind of diplomatic inquiry: the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare does not independently test every shipment from China, but asks the exporting government to confirm compliance, and only escalates to import suspensions or intensified customs sampling if a violation is found in goods that already entered Japan. This is the same channel used after the 2008 Chinese-made frozen gyoza pesticide poisonings, an incident 5ch commenters reference as the reason many now distrust Chinese food assurances by default.
The thread isn’t really split on whether formaldehyde is dangerous — everyone agrees it is — but on how much this specific case should change behavior. Some posters treat it as confirmation that all Chinese food products should be avoided outright; others (post 147) point out that’s practically impossible given how deeply Chinese ingredients run through Japan’s supply chain, from Daiso snacks to jelly cups to peanuts.
What the thread misses is that fresh napa cabbage sold in Japanese supermarkets is almost entirely domestic (as post 7 notes but doesn’t dwell on), meaning this particular contamination poses little direct risk to whole cabbage on Japanese shelves — the real exposure route, if any, would be processed foods or restaurant ingredients where sourcing is far less transparent to consumers, which is exactly why country-of-origin labeling loopholes worry posters more than the cabbage itself.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed+) thread「Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare: “Cabbage shipped after being soaked in formalin solution — confirmed with the Chinese government that none was exported to Japan”」.
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