South Korea's health and food watchdog said Friday it has failed to determine the cause of widespread food poisoning that caused many schools to stop providing lunches to students.
The Korea Center for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said it has yet to determine why thousands of students got sick after eating lunches provided by a local catering service.
The report came after food safety authorities examined the operation of CJ Food System, South Korea's largest foodstuff distributor.
The worst cases of suspected food poisoning occurred for several days after June 16 at 35 schools in Seoul and surrounding Gyeonggi Province. The incident caused about 2,963 students to have nausea, diarrhea, stomachaches and fever. Among them, 2,653 recovered on their own and 310 received medical treatment, according to the Ministry of Education and Human Resources Development.
The incident has caused the company to announce that it would halt its food catering business for schools.
The inability of the KCDC to pinpoint the main culprit is expected to make it very hard to take legal or other actions against the CJ Food System and companies responsible for providing ingredients to make the food.
CJ Food System, which was in danger of getting its business license revoked, showed signs of relief and reiterated that it would stick to the promises it made on Monday such as ending its school cafeteria business and donating meal service facilities to schools.
"We're taking various measures to relieve the pains of students, parents and schools caused by the meal service suspension," the company added.
The Korea Food and Drug Administration last week warned that it would revoke CJ Food System's business license, and education officials said the Seoul metropolitan government would issue orders for it to close its branch offices, if the company is confirmed to be responsible for the outbreak.
The KCDC said in its findings that in tests conducted on 1,821 students who suffered from diarrhea, 6.6 percent, or 121 cases, involved the noro virus.
It said that while the virus was detected, they could not find out why it was in the food.
"Initially we thought it might have to do with the water used to clean the vegetables, but tests did not verify this theory," a health official said. He said another method of trying to find out the cause of the food poisoning is being looked at, including using data on all food eaten by people who came down with food poisoning.
Others, however, said that the inability to discover the cause at the outset will make it harder to determine what made people sick later on.
Officials at CJ Food System said the company will not make a public announcement on the government's interim report just yet and would rather wait until the KCDC comes up with results of its further investigation.
Meanwhile, Education Minister Kim Jin-pyo offered to resign earlier in the day to hold himself responsible for the outbreak.
The noro virus has been repeatedly cited as the cause of food poisoning since 2001, when 935 people got sick after eating contaminated food. The number rose to 1,442 people in 2003, but fell to 719 in 2005.
Seoul, June 30 (Yonhap news)
Heath authorities unable to determine cause of school food poisoning |
