May 6, 2011
TOKYO (AFP) - Japanese police raided a low-price Korean-style barbecue restaurant chain on Friday to investigate the deaths of four people from food poisoning after they ate raw beef at its outlets.
Police officers searched the head office of the chain's operator Food Forus Co. in Kanazawa, central Japan, several of its restaurants in surrounding areas and its meat supplier in Tokyo, media reports said.
Ninety diners had fallen sick after eating raw beef at eateries in near Tokyo and on Honshu island since April 19, the health ministry said, of whom 23 were seriously ill.
E. coli bacteria of the O-111 strain were detected in the four fatal cases, the ministry said.
A spokesman for the Toyama prefectural police headquarters could not immediately confirm the reports.
Dark-suited police officers were seen entering the premises with cardboard boxes to collect evidence in the raids, in television footage aired by public broadcaster NHK and private networks.
They suspected that Food Forus had failed to maintain sufficiently sanitary conditions for serving raw beef in a popular Korean-style dish called "yukhoe" which is similar to steak tartare.
A woman in her 70s died from food poisoning on Thursday after dining at one of Food Forus' Yakiniku-zakaya Ebisu eateries in Toyama on April 23, a local government official said.
A family member of the woman and two boys died earlier after eating beef at the chain's restaurants in Toyama and Fukui.
