Hong Kong Tests Canned Pork Banned In Singapore For Banned Additive

December 1, 2007 11:07 a.m. EST

Hong Kong, China (AHN) - Health authorities in Hong Kong are not yet banning two brands of China-made canned pork that were recalled from Singapore stores until its laboratory tests prove that samples of the products are laced with a banned antibiotic.

Meanwhile, the Shanghai firm that produces the Maling and Gulong brands of canned pork denied it uses nitrofurans, a banned cancer-causing antibiotic, in manufacturing luncheon meat, stewed pig trotters and minced pork.

Hong Kong's Centre for Food Safety on Friday started getting samples of Maling and Gulong canned meat for laboratory testing. The Straits Times quoted Hong Kong's Secretary for Food and Health York Chow Yat-ngok as saying there will be no recall of Maling and Gulong canned meat in local supermarkets before they determined if the same products banned in Singapore belong to consignments shipped to Hong Kong.

A spokesman of the Shanghai Maling Food Co. Ltd. was also quoted by the Straits Times as saying that there is no cause for worry and that products shipped to Singapore are different from those sent to Hong Kong.

Maling quality control spokeswoman Shi Min added that no factory will put nitrofurans in the production process, though she did not discount the possibility that pigs may have been fed with the antibiotics.

Hong Kong supermarket chain ParknShop declared it will not yet remove the products from its outlets.