China-made Maling and Gulong canned pork products have been suspended by Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) as a recent consignment of the canned pork products were found to contain traces of Nitrofurans.
According to Straits Times
1) Nitrofurans is a banned antibiotic, which are fed to pigs to treat illnesses.
2) AVA spokeman: Even though the levels of antibiotic found were very low, we believe in taking no chances. Food safety is of paramount importance
3) AVA spokeman: Previous imports of these brands and products from other brands had passed safety checks
4) Chinese suppliers are playing it safe by not selling Singapore the other lesser known brands from the six factories that are still in AVA’s good books.
The questions that comes to my mind are
1) Why is nitrofuran banned?
2) Why are the Chinese suppliers playing it safe? Could their pork products contain nitrofurans or some other banned substances, that they are afraid of being booted by AVA?
So, I did a search on it. Nitrofurans have been used as antibiotic since their antimicrobial action was detected in 1944. However, a search turn out that nitrofurans can also cause cancer. It can damage the genetic material (DNA) of human cells. As such nitrofurans are banned by USA Food and Drug Administration (FDA) not only for systemic (affecting the entire body) use, but also for topical (on the surface of the body) use, as evidence showed that even tropical application of nitrofurans can cause residues of the drugs to be found in the animal’s milk and tissues including muscle, kidney and liver. In USA, the systemic use of the drug was banned in 1991, while the tropical use of the drug was banned in 2002.
References
1) Peter Herrlich and Manfred Schweiger, “Nitrofurans, a group of synthetic antibiotics, with a new mode of action: Discrimination of specific messenger RNA classes“, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, Vol. 73, No. 10, pp. 2286-3390, October 1976
2) “Topical use of nitrofurans banned by FDA“, Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, March 15, 2002.
3) “Topical Nitrofurans; Extralabel Animal Drug Use; Order of Prohibition“, Federal Register, Feb. 6, 2002.
