Chinese official blames Panama importer for contaminated products
Businesses in Panama, not China were "mainly responsible" for passing off an industrial chemical as a medical ingredient leading to the deaths of at least 51 people, a senior official in China's product-inspection agency said Thursday.
'The Panamanian business people are mainly responsible because they changed the scope of use and shelf-life of this product.' —Wei Chuanzhong, Administration for Quality Supervision
Wei Chuanzhong, vice-minister of the Administration for Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, said Chinese companies sold an industrial solvent misleadingly labelled as "TD glycerin" to Spanish companies who then sold it to Panamanian companies.
Panamanian firms, he said, then doctored paperwork, mislabelling the product as medical glycerine. It was then used to make cough syrup and other medicine.
"The Panamanian business people are mainly responsible because they changed the scope of use and shelf-life of this product," Wei said.
Thousands of tubes of toothpaste recalled
Wei also dismissed concerns about exported Chinese toothpaste made with diethylene glycol, a chemical cousin of antifreeze and the same substance that caused the deaths in Panama.
Thousands of tubes of Chinese-made "Mr. Cool" and "Excell" branded toothpaste have been seized in the Dominican Republic, Panama, Costa Rica and Nicaragua after a consumer alerted authorities that diethylene glycol was listed as an ingredient.
Wei said there was "no sound evidence" to indicate that the chemical was dangerous in very low concentrations. He suggested that the seized Chinese brands had safe amounts of the chemical but didn't give specifics. He said China would issue clear guidelines for its use.
The deaths in Panama, which began last year, have dramatically added to a growing international alarm about the safety of food and medicines exported by China.
Canada, U.S. officials block tainted imports
A slew of Chinese exports have recently been banned or turned away by U.S. inspectors, including wheat gluten tainted with the chemical melamine, which has been blamed for dog and cat deaths in North America, monkfish that turned out to be toxic pufferfish, drug-laced frozen eel, and juice made with unsafe colour additives.
Last week, Canada's food watchdog intercepted a shipment of corn gluten imported from China that tested positive for melamine. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency is continuing to check shipments of wheat, rice, soy and corn gluten and protein concentrates coming into the country from China.
China's dismal drug safety record was underscored this week by a Chinese court's decision to sentence the country's former top drug regulator to death on charges of corruption and negligence.
In the case of Panama's deadly medicine, China admits it was the source of the chemical that ended up in cough syrup and other treatments but insists the chemical was originally labelled for industrial use only.
Diethylene glycol, or DEG, is a thickening agent used as a low-cost — but frequently deadly — substitute for glycerin, a sweetener commonly used in drugs.