Probe into pork problem

The State Council's call for a thorough probe into the scandal of feeding pigs with banned substances on Monday will help re-establish the public's confidence in the government. The working group dispatched by the State Council was quoted as saying that anyone involved in the tainted pork will face severe penalties.

A ranking official of the Ministry of Agriculture said last week that the random testing of around 2 percent of 600 million pigs a year will certainly have loopholes, which seems to shift the responsibility from the food safety watchdogs to the system and pig raisers.

However, investigations show that it is not so much the random testing methods as a dereliction of duty on the part of related food safety departments that are to blame for the pork containing ractopamine and clenbuterol.