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China Food Worker Gets Life Sentence for Poisoning Dumplings

A Chinese court on Monday sentenced a former food plant worker to life in prison for poisoning frozen dumplings that sickened 10 people in Japan in 2008 and strained relations with Tokyo just months before the Beijing Olympics. The incident prompted a recall of millions of bags of dumplings.

In this photo released by China's Xinhua new agency, Lu Yueting, center, stands in his trial at the Shijiazhuang Municipal Intermediate People's Court in Shijiazhuang, capital of north China's Hebei Province, Monday, Jan. 20, 2014. The court sentenced Lu, a former food plant worker, to life in prison for poisoning frozen dumplings that sickened 10 people in Japan in 2008 and strained relations with Tokyo just months before the Beijing Olympics. The incident prompted a recall of millions of bags of dumplings, and Chinese food products taken off shelves in Japan out of safety worries. (AP Xinhua, Ding Lixin)

BEIJING (AP) — A Chinese court on Monday sentenced a former food plant worker to life in prison for poisoning frozen dumplings that sickened 10 people in Japan in 2008 and strained relations with Tokyo just months before the Beijing Olympics.

The incident prompted a recall of millions of bags of dumplings, and Chinese food products were taken off shelves in Japan out of safety worries.

A court in the northeastern city of Shijiazhuang sentenced Lu Yueting, 39, to life in prison, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

Lu had been dissatisfied with his wages and injected insecticide into several boxes of frozen dumplings in late 2007 to get attention from his managers.

The products were later sold in Japan and in the Chinese city of Chengdu, sickening at least four other people there.

Lu was detained in 2010 after more than two years of investigation. He contaminated the dumplings with methamidophos, a type of pesticide, compounding widespread fears about the safety of Chinese food exports.

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