Clenbuterol, a treatment for respiratory infections in horses but never cleared for use in food animals, is showing up more frequently in pork in China’s far western Xinjiang region, according to Associated Press. Consumers end up in hospital with stomach aches and heart palpitations.
Clenbuterol hurries pigs to market and increases lean meat deposition. It’s also known as a performance enhancer. Recently cyclist and Tour de France champion Alberto Contador was cleared of wrongdoing by the Spanish Cycling Federation after he claimed that he had failed a drug test because he had eaten contaminated meat. German table tennis player Dimitrij Ovtcharov was also cleared by anti-doping authorities. They accepted his claim that he had eaten drug-tainted meat from China.