Israeli Grapefruits Tainted by Harmless Dye, Not Poison

The “deadly poison” said to contaminate grapefruits from Israel has turned out to be a harmless coloring agent, Italy’s state-owned television channel, RAI, reported Wednesday.

The health authorities reported that several people who had consumed the blue-stained fruit suffered no ill effects, though the substance did kill laboratory mice.

Israel Adato, an Israeli Agriculture Ministry expert who flew to Rome on Tuesday to help local health authorities trace the tainted fruit, said in a television interview that it was virtually impossible to inject any substance into grapefruit without it showing.

But for a while there was near panic. The Italian Health Ministry ordered grapefruit removed from shops, markets and warehouses all over Italy on Tuesday, after the blue-dyed fruit was found in a Rome supermarket and lab mice died from eating it.

The authorities had been alerted by anonymous telephone calls to the news media last week that grapefruit from Israel had been sabotaged to protest the Israelis’ treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.

SCARE SPREADS TO SWITZERLAND

More than half the grapefruit sold in Italy is imported from Israel. Cofres, an Italian company in Verona, is the import agents. A search of its warehouses found no tainted fruit.

Nevertheless, the scare spread from Italy to Switzerland, which also imports large quantities of Israeli fruit. The Health Ministry in Bern said Wednesday there was no cause for alarm.

Israeli exports to European Community countries were the targets of sabotage 10 years ago. In 1978, Israeli citrus fruit on sale in Holland, Belgium, West Germany and France was found to have been contaminated with mercury.

(Geneva correspondent Tamar Levy contributed to this story.)