Japanese firm recalls baby food after insect found inside

Asahi Holdings subsidiary Wakodo has recalled thousands of baby food pouches in Japan after a customer found a cricket inside one.

The news comes a day after a human tooth was discovered in some McDonald’s French fries elsewhere in Japan.

Wakodo apologied for the incident and announced it would be recalling an estimated 120,000 bags of the meat-and-potatoes mix. The company received the complaint last month from a customer who purchased a pouch in Tochigi, north-east of Tokyo.

It added that it could not determine how the cricket got inside the package, but that it was unlikely to have occurred during the manufacturing. The company has not experienced similar incidents at its factory over the past year.

Wakodo also said that it was also unlikely for a cricket to be cooked and remain in complete form inside the pouch considering the heating and mixing procedures.

In a separate incident, supermarket chain operator Sendo in Chiba said that they recalled minced meat after a customer found a piece of metal in the product.

The company said that it had not received any reports of injury from the piece of metal that was a part of its mincer.

There were also reports of a 1.2cm nail being found inside a package meal delivered by Watami Takushoku, a group company of Watami, in October.

A spokesman for Watami was reported by the Wall Street Journal as saying that the bento box the nail was found in was made at a factory in Niigata prefecture, but the nail did not come from any of the machinery there.

The company said it had not been able to determine how the nail got inside the product, and had not ruled out tampering by a third-party.