South Korea’s food safety regulator said on Saturday that it had either thrown away or sent back 22 tonnes of Mexican pork after it was found to contain cancer-causing antibiotics, the Yonhap news agency reported.
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The National Veterinary Research & Quarantine Service had found that the Mexican meat, imported on April 12, contains a harmful chemical, called ‘nitrofuran,’ quarantine officials said.
Nitrofuran is a drug used to treat animal diseases such as fowl typhoid or salmonella bacteria. South Korea has banned the use of nitrofuran since February 2003 as the drug can induce carcinogenic residues in animal tissues.
“Due to the incident, we have decided to conduct a closer investigation into all Mexican pork to be imported from now on,” an official at the service said.
Mexican pork accounted for 1.2% of South Korea’s total pork imports as of the end of April. South Korea imported 1,388 tonnes of Mexican pork in 2004, a negligible portion of the nation’s total imports of 115,668 tonnes that year.
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