Saizeriya trusted Chinese tests
Written by Writer on Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008
Saizeriya ‘trusted’ Chinese tests
The Yomiuri Shimbun
(Oct. 22, 2008)
Italian family restaurant chain operator Saizeriya Co., whose pizza dough was reported Monday to contain a small amount of melamine, said Tuesday that despite reports of melamine contamination in other China-made food products, it continued to use pizza dough made in China based on a report from its supplier that it was free of the industrial chemical.
“[We received a report that] no melamine had been detected in samples inspected in China and we believed this report,” Saizeriya President Yasuhiko Shogaki said at a press conference Tuesday, in response to a question about why the company had continued to use the pizza dough before receiving results of tests taken in Japan.
Saizeriya requested the Chinese company test the pizza dough it had in stock the day after an announcement that melamine had been detected in China-made sweets sold by a major Japanese food company on Sept. 20.
Japanese test results of the pizza dough eventually revealed the presence of melamine in 5.7 tons of frozen dough made in Guangdong Province, China, and imported by a food company in Tokyo on Sept. 10, according to the Health, Labor and Welfare Ministry.
The voluntary inspection that Saizeriya underwent in Japan showed melamine contamination of 4.3 parts per million–beyond the health ministry-set standard of 2.5 ppm for voluntary recall.
Saizeriya received on Thursday the report about the melamine contamination of pizza dough produced on Aug. 9.
Asked why the restaurant continued serving pizzas made from the dough after Oct. 1, when another sweet made in China was found to be tainted with melamine–this time egg tarts produced by Saizeriya’s own supplier in Guangdong Province–the company said it was not aware that the chemical had been detected in the Chinese supplier’s egg tarts.
“We had absolutely no inkling there would be any melamine contamination,” Shogaki said. “We apologize for failing to take prompt action to tackle the problem.”
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Saizeriya to pay back pizza bills
Saizeriya said Tuesday it would return the money customers spent on pizzas served during a period when dough, some of which was found to be tainted with melamine, was used.
All 54,000 imported pizza dough bases manufactured by the Chinese firm on Aug. 9 have already been served at Saizeriya’s 542 outlets in the Kanto and Tohoku regions, the company said.
The pizza dough in question is likely to have been served between Sept. 25 and Oct. 2, according to the firm.
The company said that on request it would pay back the price of pizzas purchased by customers who visited the outlets during this period.
