China has pledged to tighten supervision of the animal feed industry, state media said yesterday, amid signs a toxic chemical found in milk and eggs was being mixed into livestock feed.
“The ministry will tighten its supervision of the feed industry and crack down on producers who add melamine to their products,” the China Daily quoted Wang Zhicai (王智才), head of the Agriculture Ministry’s livestock division, as saying.
Melamine, an industrial chemical normally used to make plastic, was first found to have been added to milk in China, leading to the death of four infants and sickening at least 53,000 other people.
The chemical — which can lead to severe kidney problems if ingested in large amounts — was then discovered in Chinese eggs, leading to concerns the chemical was much more prevalent in China’s food chain than initially believed.
Wang acknowledged that the ministry issued a regulation in June last year banning the addition of melamine into livestock feed, a transcript of the interview on its Web site said.
“Anyone who adds melamine into feed is acting against the law. We must resolutely combat this,” Wang said.
The ministry also introduced a “rigid” standard to test the level of melamine in feed, Wang said, following a scandal over contaminated feed exported to the US that killed hundreds of pets there.
Despite this, experts have indicated melamine could still be mixed into animal feed to make it appear higher in protein, and concerns are mounting that the practice is widespread.
In an editorial published on Friday, the China Daily said it was unclear whether melamine had found its way into other types of food.
“We hope it has not. But if fodder can be confirmed as the source of contamination for both the eggs and milk, action must be taken to check how widespread the use of this chemical is in the fodder industry,” the paper said.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) is to visit Russia next month for a summit of the BRICS bloc of developing economies, Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi (王毅) said on Thursday, a move that comes as Moscow and Beijing seek to counter the West’s global influence. Xi’s visit to Russia would be his second since the Kremlin sent troops into Ukraine in February 2022. China claims to take a neutral position in the conflict, but it has backed the Kremlin’s contentions that Russia’s action was provoked by the West, and it continues to supply key components needed by Moscow for
Japan scrambled fighter jets after Russian aircraft flew around the archipelago for the first time in five years, Tokyo said yesterday. From Thursday morning to afternoon, the Russian Tu-142 aircraft flew from the sea between Japan and South Korea toward the southern Okinawa region, the Japanese Ministry of Defense said in a statement. They then traveled north over the Pacific Ocean and finished their journey off the northern island of Hokkaido, it added. The planes did not enter Japanese airspace, but flew over an area subject to a territorial dispute between Japan and Russia, a ministry official said. “In response, we mobilized Air Self-Defense
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
China would train thousands of foreign law enforcement officers to see the world order “develop in a more fair, reasonable and efficient direction,” its minister for public security has said. “We will [also] send police consultants to countries in need to conduct training to help them quickly and effectively improve their law enforcement capabilities,” Chinese Minister of Public Security Wang Xiaohong (王小洪) told an annual global security forum. Wang made the announcement in the eastern city of Lianyungang on Monday in front of law enforcement representatives from 122 countries, regions and international organizations such as Interpol. The forum is part of ongoing