Japan imports more food from China than the United States does. Although there are disputes on the number of people who have become sick, with some sources attributing 500 cases of food poisoning to the tainted Chinese food. Officials had tried to reassure people, but concerns over food safety turned into near hysteria and many retailers responded by pulling all Chinese-made processed foods from their grocery or department store shelves.

Although pesticides have only been found in dumplings produced by the Tianyang Food Processing in Hebei Province, outside Beijing, Japanese food processing companies had issued recalls for at least 59 meat products from that company as of Friday, according to reports. Observers say this incident could seriously damage relations between China and Japan, which imports $56.7 billion of food annually from China.

According to reports, the Chinese factory where the pesticide-laden dumplings exported to Japan were made was the same factory where dumplings contaminated by suspected organophosphorus were earlier made. Health problems caused from eating the tainted food ranged from vomiting to a brief coma for a 5-year-old girl.