PIGS REARED TO PASS OLYMPICS DOPING TEST RUN INTO HURDLE By Mure Dickie in Beijing
Thursday, November 15, 2007
Who knew Olympic pigs would pose such political problems?
Organisers of the 2008 Beijing Olympics have in recent days been scrambling to quiet local discussion of plans by their official meat supplier to raise special safe and drug-free pigs to feed athletes attending the games.
The effort by the Beijing organising committee, Bocog, comes after the plans by the Qianxihe Food Group prompted angry discussion among internet users about special treatment for elite groups and the possible dangers of food supplied to ordinary people. "Looks like foreigners cannot be eating some of the food we Chinese can eat," complained one commentator on the scol.com.cn website.
Qianxihe, which uses the English-language brand Lucky Crane, told the Financial Times in August that it would rear organically fed pigs at secret
locations in order to provide Olympic athletes with meat guaranteed not to cause them to fail doping tests.
Bocog did not immediately comment on the plans, which were confirmed by Qianxihe to other media and widely reported. Such a scheme could help to reassure Olympic participants concerned by a string of safety and quality-control scandals suffered by Chinese companies in recent months.
However, in a statement this month responding to "heated discussion" of the Olympic pigs plan, Bocog said it had never requested secret pig production bases and hit out at other reports that the pigs would be fed Chinese medicine and specially exercised.
"Bocog has already issued a warning to the relevant company over its conduct," the organisers said.
But Bocog stopped short of denying directly that Qianxihe had put in place safeguards for its games pigs.
The organisers also did not issue and post the "Olympic pig clarification" on its English website, in spite of widespread interest in the issue overseas.
A Qianxihe company spokesman, since replaced, said in August that the company saw its "political duty" as supplying pigs that would be chosen from carefully monitored parents.
The company's new spokesman insisted this week that there was no such thing as a "standalone Olympic pig" but declined to give details of how or where it was raising its porkers for supply to the games.
"There's no need for us to tell you this, there's no need for you to ask us this, and you should not be reporting on this," the spokesman said. "China is a political country."
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