The mushrooms served by the Valencian restaurant Riff, and which may likely have caused illness in several diners, including a woman who died, came from China and were distributed by a company based in the province of León.
The Ministry of Health, which requested data "on the product's origin, species and form of marketing (fresh or dried)," has reiterated that "the investigation is still underway and until the results of the analysis are ready, it will not be able to determine the cause of the intoxication."
The batch of mushrooms purchased by the restaurant RiFF have been distributed to restaurants across Spain, so the health authorities are trying to find out if there have been other cases of food poisoning.
The owner of RiFF, the German Bernd H. Knöller, issued a new statement through his Twitter account to stress that his restaurant had bought the mushrooms "from an authorized legal distributor in Leon, like many other restaurants in Spain. They were definitely not bought in China." He reiterated that "we work to offer the best products, and this one [in reference to mushrooms] met all the relevant quality guarantees."
Those in charge of the investigation have the hypothesis that the incident was most likely caused by the ingestion of rice with mushrooms, although the Ministry of Health is waiting to receive the final results on the samples collected in this restaurant, which has a Michelin star and remains closed to the public.
As published by La Nueva Crónica on Tuesday (and confirmed to Efe by sources of the Government Delegation of Castile-Leon, after learning that the mushrooms had been distributed from Leon), the Council of Health of Valencia contacted the Castilian administration, which proceeded to conduct an inspection on the aforementioned company last Friday. His owner had already decided to bring all orders to a halt until the cause of the poisoning was clarified. He himself requested an analysis to check whether the product was suitable for consumption.
