China has been hit by a fresh food scandal after the country’s largest meat processor, Shuanghui, was forced to apologize when an illegal additive was found in some of its pork products.

Jiyuan Shuanghui, an affiliate of the Henan-based Shuanghui Group, was said to have bought pigs that had been fed with clenbuterol. The additive can speed up muscle building and fat burning to produce leaner pork – lean meat sells for a premium in China.

Clenbuterol is banned in China because if eaten by humans it can lead to dizziness, heart palpitations, profuse sweating, nausea, headaches, limb tremors and even cancer.

The Henan province conducted urine tests on 1,512 pigs in nine pig farms, with 52 pigs testing positive. Immediately, chiefs of animal husbandry bureaus in Mengzhou City, Qinyang City and Wenxian County received duty suspension notices. Another 27 officials in the province were in police custody, sacked or suspended from duty. Also, the province intends to random test more than 1.63 million pigs in five counties and cities.

Meat products that are suspected of having been tarnished by the banned feed additive have already been taken off the shelves and meat confirmed to contain the additive have been destroyed, according to government officials.

While the China Meat Association tried to down play the possibility that tainted pork was widespread, many consumers will be avoiding pork for the moment. This pork scandal is definitely nothing new to the Chinese. There have been 18 outbreaks of food-related clenbuterol poisoning between 1998 and 2007, according to a report on the Shanghai Food Safety website. One person died and more than 1,700 others fell ill, the website said.

Well at least the salt scare is now over.

via Xinhua, Yahoo News and Chinadaily

This comes as no surprise. Straight after the accident at Japan’s Fukushima Daiichi plant, China has suspended approval for new nuclear power stations. It will also carry out checks at existing reactors and those under construction. China is currently building 27 new reactors – about 40% of the total number being built around the world.

The decision to temporarily halt approval for nuclear plants came at a meeting of China’s State Council, or Cabinet, chaired by Premier Wen Jiabao. “We will temporarily suspend approval for nuclear power projects, including those that have already begun preliminary work, before nuclear safety regulations are approved,” read a statement from the State Council.

China currently gets only about 2% of its electricity from nuclear power from 13 reactors, but it has launched an ambitious project to drastically increase those figures. It is currently building more reactors than any other country in the world. According to the World Nuclear Association, China wants to build a total of 110 nuclear reactors over the next few years.

Although China’s nuclear power plans seem very ambitious, they are not entirely unreasonable as the country is still heavily dependent on coal for power. There are many forms of greener energy but to meet the demands of such a large population, nuclear power seems to be unavoidable.

The problem is that many of the new nuclear plants are near highly populated areas and China doesn’t have the best safety record in respect to nuclear power. International experts complained in 2009 that China was short on nuclear inspectors, a problem the government pledged to remedy by quintupling the number of staff at its safety agency by the end of that year. Also in 2009, the government-appointed head of China National Nuclear Corp., which overseas China’s nuclear program, was detained because of allegations of bid-rigging in nuclear power construction contracts. That scandal raised fears that contractors were being allowed to cut corners and evade safety standards.

I would add that this suspension will most likely only be temporary.

via BBC News and NY Times

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