China crackdown on drugmakers' pollution

China's pharmaceutical manufacturing plants face more rigorous controls on waste disposal after the introduction of the country's first pollution standards tailored for the industry, Reuters reports.

One of the recent spate of food safety concerns in the USA involved the problem of contaminated sea-food from China, where antibiotics that are not approved by the US Food and Drug Administration are used to counter the effects of rearing fish in polluted waters. Phyllis Schlafly, a US conservative commentator, recently quoted the FDA's estimate that a quarter of the shrimp imported into the USA from China are affected. In addition, 51 shipments of Chinese catfish, eel, shrimp and tilapia were rejected by the US authorities because of the presence of salmonella, veterinary drugs and the chemical nitrofuran, a carcinogen.