No foul play found in Taitung food poisoning case: Prosecutors

Taipei, Dec. 20 (CNA) No evidence of foul play was found in a recent food poisoning case in Taitung County that left four people dead, including an 83-year-old woman surnamed Tseng (曾), the Taitung District Prosecutors Office said Friday.

The Taitung woman died on Sept. 17 after eating glutinous millet dumplings she made.

That evening, several relatives and friends who came to mourn her death and ate leftover glutinous rice dumplings in her kitchen later exhibited symptoms such as vomiting and convulsions.

Three more people subsequently died, while nearly a dozen were hospitalized for treatment.

At a press conference on Friday, chief prosecutor Chen Yen-chiu (陳妍萩) said the cause of the poisoning was due to the millet containing terbufos, a hazardous chemical compound found in some pesticides.

The millet had been given to Tseng by a relative two years previously and was intended to be used for planting, according to Chen.

However, she never planted it and kept the millet in a plastic jar together with other untainted millet, the chief prosecutor said.

Due to age and having poor eyesight, Tseng likely forgot about the tainted millet when she decided to prepare the dumplings in September.

In addition, the terbufos may have already lost its pungency after two years, hence she probably did not notice anything out of the ordinary, Chen added.

Furthermore, Chen said no one intentionally distributed the leftover dumplings from Tseng's kitchen, as the other victims simply discovered the food and ate it of their own accord.

Meanwhile, Tseng asked for the tainted millet, and the person who provided it believed she was going to use it for planting and not consumption, Chen said.

As there was no evidence of foul play, prosecutors have concluded that the case did not involve any intentional or negligent criminal conduct, she said, and because there was no direct correlation between the act of providing the millet and her death, prosecutors decided to close the case with no charges filed.

Aliman, who is from Taiwan's Indigenous Bunun tribe and founder of Taitung's Luanshan Forest Culture Museum, told CNA later on Friday that some farmers growing corn, millet or other seedlings often like to mix terbufos in their grain to prevent birds from eating the young plants and to guard against pests.