Toxic Clenbuterol in Chinese and Mexican Meat
July 29th, 2012Via: CBC:
Fearing tainted meat, China’s women’s volleyball team has stuck to a strict vegetarian diet for the last three weeks — which the team’s coach is now blaming for his athletes’ abysmal performance.
The Chinese team lost four of five matches at a world tournament that ended Sunday in Ningbo, China, falling to the United States, Brazil, Turkey and Thailand.
While Brazil and the U.S. are powerhouses in women’s volleyball, Turkey and Thailand didn’t even qualify for the 2008 Olympics, where China won bronze.
“They have showed significant decline in their strength and fitness,” coach Yu Juemin said of his squad after Sunday’s defeat to the Americans.
“We are wary of meat tainted by lean-meat powder, and we didn’t eat any during the game period,” Yu told the Shanghai Daily newspaper.
Athletes warned
All Chinese athletes have been warned by the country’s Sports Ministry to avoid meat contaminated with the powder, also known as clenbuterol, because it’s banned by the International Olympic Committee as a performance-enhancing substance.
China bans the use of clenbuterol in livestock because of the chemical’s noxious long-term effects on human health, but many pork farmers still administer it because it produces leaner meat. The World Anti-Doping Agency issued a warning last year about clenbuterol-tainted meat in China as well as Mexico, where it is also rampant.
As a result, the Chinese volleyball team only eats meat at its training camp, where the food can be tested for contamination. When players go elsewhere in the country, they have to forego pork, beef and lamb — as they did in the lead-up to the volleyball World Grand Prix finals tournament.
Related: Secret Organic Gardens for China’s Elite
Interesting how they only mention Chinese clenbuterol when there are a number of “lean-meat powders” on the market and China banned the sale, use and production of all such powders in late 2011– of course they’ve also banned the ‘use’ on a number of other occasions:
“Lean-meat powder” use provokes crackdown
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english2010/china/2011-11/27/c_131272322.htm
China bans production, sale of ractopamine
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/china/2011-12/23/c_131323957.htm
However, the Five Eyes countries and their Satrapies currently allow the use of anotherbeta agonist,ractopamine, in pork, beef & turkey. Naturally ractopamine has been ‘proven safe for human consumption’ by its producer with one limited study.
The US has been stron-arming Codex to set “safe residual limits” for ractopamine in meat which will force the countries who have banned it, to accept it for their markets:
China and the European Union, which has 27 country votes at Codex, are vehemently opposed to adopting MRLs for ractopamine. They have so far managed to block repeated attempts by the U.S., Brazil, and others who use the drug in livestock production and want a standard adopted.
If a global standard were set, the United States could pursue trade actions against countries that ban meat produced with the drug, such as China, Taiwan, and the EU.
http://thefern.org/behind-the-global-fight-over-livestock-drug/
Whoops! Looks like they succeded on July 8:
http://www.agweb.com/article/codex_adopts_global_food_safety_standards_for_ractopamine_narasin_and_monensin/