China halts export of Maling

SHANGHAI (AP) — Exports from one of China’s best-known food makers were stopped yesterday after Hong Kong authorities said they found unsafe chemicals in canned luncheon meat.

Shanghai-based Maling Food Co. issued a statement yesterday saying it had sent top executives to Hong Kong to assist with an investigation into allegations that a shipment of its meat, about as famous in China as Spam is in the US, was contaminated with the antibiotic nitrofurans, which is thought to cause cancer.

“We take this issue very seriously and immediately took relevant measures, asking the Hong Kong authorities to recall the affected products,” Maling said in a statement on its Web site.

Phone calls to the company’s offices rang unanswered Friday morning.

The investigation comes amid a slew of findings of potentially unsafe foods and other products. Chinese officials have vowed to tighten controls on food processors, slaughterhouses and other suppliers to help improve safety.

China closed more than 6,000 slaughterhouses and created a database of 23,052 slaughterhouses across the country as part of its campaign to improve food safety, the state-run newspaper China Daily reported Friday.

Various scandals both at home and abroad over products tainted with chemicals and other toxins have prompted renewed vigilance over widespread violations of safety standards, such as adding water to dead pigs to raise their weight.

Late last month, authorities in Shanghai arrested two people for allegedly processing chickens using industrial salt. The chickens were sold at outdoor markets and food stalls in the suburbs, local reports said.

Maling is one of China’s best-known food companies, with shares in its Shanghai Maling Aquarius Co. traded on the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

The company issued a statement earlier in the week saying it did not plan to recall luncheon meat sold in the Chinese mainland because it was produced separately. But a report in the state-run newspaper Southern Daily, based in the southern city of Guangzhou, said the product had been pulled from local supermarket shelves.

That report quoted a Maling safety official saying the pork might have been contaminated before it reached the factory.

Officials at the Shanghai Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau would not comment but referred callers to a brief notice about the investigation posted on their Web site.

The export suspension applies to all of Maling’s canned food products, which include meat, seafood, fruits and vegetables.