Police wage aar against shoddy food, drugs

China's Ministry of Public Security on Thursday launched a campaign to fight against food with banned additives, illegal cooking oil, unfresh pork and counterfeit drugs.

The initiative, which will run for the whole of 2012, aims to ensure people's "dinner table safety," according to a statement of the ministry.

The police will keep up the pressure on clenbuterol, a banned chemical that makes pork leaner but can be harmful to humans, and dirty cooking oil, to "prevent them harming the society," the statement said.

The police will target the purchase, sale and slaughter of pigs and mainly crack down upon criminal gangs profiting from purchasing ill pigs and manufacturing unfresh pork.

Drugs treating tumors and cardiovascular diseases, as well as blood products and vaccines, are main inspection fields, the statement said, adding that efforts must be made to crack down on the manufacture and sale of fake drugs via the Internet, in multinational networks and in small rural pharmacies and clinics, as well as fake drugs in urban hospitals.

Attributing quotes to an unnamed senior official of the ministry, the statement said, "Anything found to be harmful will become the target of the crackdown," adding that efforts must be made to solve the root problem so as to "let people have assured oil, meat and drugs."

Since last year, the police have uncovered more than 5,200 unsafe food cases and more than 6,500 fake drug cases, 156 of which involved clenbuterol that was found in more than 24,000 tonnes of pig feed, 135 of which involved illegally recycled cooking oil amounting to 60,000 tonnes, and 170 cases of which involved unfresh pork that weighed nearly 6,000 tonnes.