Seven people have died and 30 others are ill - with four in hospital in a critical condition - after eating rat poison at a funeral banquet in Xiaogan city , Hubei province .
The preliminary finding by police was that the rat poison had been accidentally put into the food, according to Xiaonan district government spokesman Chen Shunxin .
He did not provide details, saying only that the provincial, city and district public security bureaus were still tracing the origins of the rat poison.
In line with tradition, Chimiao villager Chi Duan threw a banquet on Friday to pay tribute to his mother on the seventh day after her death, according to a Xinhuanet report.
The 37 guests were showing symptoms of poisoning, including vomiting, abdominal pain and loss of consciousness by the time the third dish arrived, and were taken to hospital.
According to the latest figure released by the Ministry of Health, there were 67 major food poisoning cases on the mainland in the second quarter of this year. The cases involved 2,129 people, 59 of whom died.
