April 7 (EUROPA PRESS) –
Officials from the Japanese Ministry of Health and the Osaka City Council questioned senior executives of the pharmaceutical company Kobayashi this past Saturday to clarify the case of the five deaths and 196 hospitalizations attributed to the possible ingestion of its dietary supplements.
The interrogations, explains the 'Japan Times', sought to understand the pharmaceutical company's business structure to clarify the impact on the population of the five products that contained a fermented rice supplement, now withdrawn from the market. The investigations lasted two hours.
The Japanese Ministry of Health has confirmed that some batches of the supplement contained puberulic acid, a natural compound derived from blue mold, highly toxic in certain quantities and absent as a rule in these supplements.
Kobayashi has acknowledged that the company began receiving the first information about the damage its product was causing at the end of January but did not make it public until two months later.
The president of the pharmaceutical company, Akihiro Kobayashi, apologized publicly at the end of last month “for the social problem caused” and promised to collaborate with the authorities' investigation.
