Chinese pork on steroids?

Sunday, April 3, 2011

Clenbuterol, a treatment for respiratory infections in horses but never cleared for use in food animals, is showing up more frequently in pork in China's far western Xinjiang region, according to Associated Press. Consumers end up in hospital with stomach aches and heart palpitations.

Clenbuterol hurries pigs to market and increases lean meat deposition. It's also known as a performance enhancer. Recently cyclist and Tour de France champion Alberto Contador was cleared of wrongdoing by the Spanish Cycling Federation after he claimed that he had failed a drug test because he had eaten contaminated meat. German table tennis player Dimitrij Ovtcharov was also cleared by anti-doping authorities. They accepted his claim that he had eaten drug-tainted meat from China.

In February 2009, 70 Chinese were reported poisoned by Clenbuterol after eating pig offal. The drug accumulates in treated animals' organs.  

"There is still a debate whether ingesting meat products contaminated with steroids can lead to a positive result for steroid test," according to the website Steroidsources.com. The lab in Cologne, Germany, accredited by the World Anti-Doping Agency reported that 22 of 28 travellers returning from China showed low levels of the anabolic steroid. BP