At least 70 people in China fell ill after eating pig organs contaminated with an illegal weight-loss drug, state press reported yesterday, the latest scare for the country’s chaotic food industry.
All the people suffered from stomach pains and diarrhea after eating the tainted pork in Guangdong Province over the past few days, the China Daily said.
Three victims were still in hospital, the newspaper reported.
Investigations showed the suspect pork bought from local markets was contaminated with clenbuterol, a drug often given to people to treat asthma, but also commonly used to cut body fat.
Cases of clenbuterol being given to pigs in China to reduce their fat have been recorded, but it is a banned food additive because it can be fatal for humans, the China Daily said.
One of the worst cases involving clenbuterol occurred in Shanghai in 2006 when 336 people were hospitalized after eating pig meat or organs contaminated with the additive, the paper said.
Three people have been detained for raising and selling the contaminated pigs in the Guangdong case, it said, citing local authorities.
The reputation of China’s poorly regulated and corruption-plagued food industry has taken repeated hits in recent years, with people dying from eating tainted products at home and contaminated exports being found overseas.
In one recent food safety scandal, six babies died of kidney problems and 300,000 babies fell ill last year after being fed milk powder tainted with a chemical normally used to make plastics.
The chemical, melamine, was added to dairy products to give them the appearance of having a higher protein content. Twenty-two dairy firms were found to have sold tainted milk.
The former head of China’s State Food and Drug Administration, Zheng Xiaoyu (鄭筱萸), was executed in 2007 for taking bribes in exchange for product safety licenses.
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
DEFENSE UPHEAVAL: Trump was also to remove the first woman to lead a military service, as well as the judge advocates general for the army, navy and air force US President Donald Trump on Friday fired the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Air Force General C.Q. Brown, and pushed out five other admirals and generals in an unprecedented shake-up of US military leadership. Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social that he would nominate former lieutenant general Dan “Razin” Caine to succeed Brown, breaking with tradition by pulling someone out of retirement for the first time to become the top military officer. The president would also replace the head of the US Navy, a position held by Admiral Lisa Franchetti, the first woman to lead a military service,
Four decades after they were forced apart, US-raised Adamary Garcia and her birth mother on Saturday fell into each other’s arms at the airport in Santiago, Chile. Without speaking, they embraced tearfully: A rare reunification for one the thousands of Chileans taken from their mothers as babies and given up for adoption abroad. “The worst is over,” Edita Bizama, 64, said as she beheld her daughter for the first time since her birth 41 years ago. Garcia had flown to Santiago with four other women born in Chile and adopted in the US. Reports have estimated there were 20,000 such cases from 1950 to
CONFIDENT ON DEAL: ‘Ukraine wants a seat at the table, but wouldn’t the people of Ukraine have a say? It’s been a long time since an election, the US president said US President Donald Trump on Tuesday criticized Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy and added that he was more confident of a deal to end the war after US-Russia talks. Trump increased pressure on Zelenskiy to hold elections and chided him for complaining about being frozen out of talks in Saudi Arabia. The US president also suggested that he could meet Russian President Vladimir Putin before the end of the month as Washington overhauls its stance toward Russia. “I’m very disappointed, I hear that they’re upset about not having a seat,” Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida when asked about the Ukrainian
RSS