China Suspends Officials Over Tainted Pork Scandal

BEIJING — A state news agency says three senior officials in central China have been suspended and more than two dozen others punished after pigs in farms there tested positive for a banned chemical that is dangerous to humans.

Tainted pork has become the latest food safety scandal to shock China after state broadcaster CCTV ran an expose that showed a subsidiary of the country's largest meat processor using illegal additives in pig feed.

The official Xinhua News Agency said Friday the heads of three animal husbandry bureaus in Henan province were suspended. Another 27 were in police custody, sacked or suspended.

Xinhua says 52 pigs out of about 1,500 tested positive for clenbuterol, a drug used by farmers to bulk up livestock.

Comments

[Punzelda]

04:49 PM on 03/23/2011

Hold on, other countries punish officials when they endanger constituents? Wow, that's so cool. I wonder if they ever thought about doing that in America.

[thrugreeneyez]

10:05 PM on 03/19/2011

Does any of the pork sold in the US come from China? I don't eat any animal products, but I was just wondering.

[MiraMcB]

03:32 PM on 03/20/2011

Not sure, but it's doubtful. Even in the Western states, any imported meats and meat products, mostly of the Walmart variety, come from Mexico. It would be awfully expensive to import meat from China and the inspection process for that kind of product importation is really rigorous.