• The Cycling News forum is looking to add some volunteer moderators with Red Rick's recent retirement. If you're interested in helping keep our discussions on track, send a direct message to @SHaines here on the forum, or use the Contact Us form to message the Community Team.

    In the meanwhile, please use the Report option if you see a post that doesn't fit within the forum rules.

    Thanks!

Chinese clenbuterol contamination, again

Dec 21, 2010
513
0
0
Visit site
Not at ALL surprised....

Having lived in China for 4 years, married to a Chinese lass, it is absolutely no surprise to me that this has happened, yet again.

With next to no Social Security for anyone (other than the Party Elite), in general the people there have to do whatever to make a living, and believe me, there is NO other society on this planet that is as Capitalist in their very being than the Han Chinese (majority ethnic grouping).

Given that their economy is in dire trouble (internal debt is at crazy levels), a tax regime that does not support the local or regional governments, and inflation ramping up at levels that would set alarm bells rining long and loud in any other country, the average person in China has to do WHATEVER to try and increase the yield of their produce - Clen for their pigs, EASY FIX.....Melamine in the milk for higher protien yield, EASY....

Get the picture?

The article in the LA Times is pretty much "on the money..."
 

Polish

BANNED
Mar 11, 2009
3,853
0
0
Visit site
Damiano Machiavelli said:
286 out of 500 wedding guests hospitalized.

http://articles.latimes.com/2011/jun/26/world/la-fg-china-food-20110627

No limit? Nice going, WADA.

Yes, you can get clen in your system by eating contaminated pigs.

But you can also get clen in your system by using it as a PED:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=clenbuterol+cycle&aq=1&aqi=g10&aql=&oq=clenbut

And it is sometimes hard to tell where the clen came from.

Ok, if you have 10,000 picograms in your system and 300 of your guests were poisoned too - pretty easy to tell it was from the pig not ped.

But how about a lone World Class Athlete with traces of clen in their system?
Not so easy to tell where that came from.
Tough situation.

PED abuse and Pig eating overlap picogram wise.
Have to look at each situation on its own.
Can't assume it is always from the pig.
"Thresholds" can not distinquish between the Pig and the PED can they?
 
May 23, 2011
977
0
0
Visit site
hrotha said:
What do you mean, no limit? This case shows why a limit wouldn't help at all.

If hundreds of people can get sick enough from Clen to require hospitalization then the number of people who would test positive at picogram levels has to be huge. There must be tons of people walking around completely unaware that they would test positive at the levels found for Contador.

GreasyMonkey said:
Given that their economy is in dire trouble (internal debt is at crazy levels), a tax regime that does not support the local or regional governments, and inflation ramping up at levels that would set alarm bells rining long and loud in any other country, the average person in China has to do WHATEVER to try and increase the yield of their produce - Clen for their pigs, EASY FIX.....Melamine in the milk for higher protien yield, EASY....

Get the picture?

Like the "sewer oil" from the article. Yowza.
 
Damiano Machiavelli said:
If hundreds of people can get sick enough from Clen to require hospitalization then the number of people who would test positive at picogram levels has to be huge. There must be tons of people walking around completely unaware that the would test positive at the levels found for Contador.
Which means a threshold doesn't make sense, as you can get poisonous levels of clen (higher than with any doping program and therefore higher than any reasonable threshold you set) by eating contaminated meat. Either you remove clen from the banned substances list, or you keep the no threshold policy and deal with the cases individually to see if there was no fault on the part of the athlete who tested positive.
 
May 23, 2011
977
0
0
Visit site
hrotha said:
Which means a threshold doesn't make sense, as you can get poisonous levels of clen (higher than with any doping program and therefore higher than any reasonable threshold you set) by eating contaminated meat. Either you remove clen from the banned substances list, or you keep the no threshold policy and deal with the cases individually to see if there was no fault on the part of the athlete who tested positive.

How do you determine there was no fault when you can test positive from a bad ham sandwich and test results are not revealed until a month or two later?
 
Damiano Machiavelli said:
How do you determine there was no fault when you can test positive from a bad ham sandwich and test results are not revealed until a month or two later?
That's a different matter altogether. If you feel it's impossible to determine whether someone's innocent, then remove clen from the banned list, but a threshold wouldn't change anything.
 
May 23, 2011
977
0
0
Visit site
hrotha said:
That's a different matter altogether. If you feel it's impossible to determine whether someone's innocent, then remove clen from the banned list, but a threshold wouldn't change anything.

It would eliminate most cases caused by contamination.
 
Damiano Machiavelli said:
It would eliminate most cases caused by contamination.
That's my point: it wouldn't. It wouldn't eliminate a case like the one that sparked this thread. For clen to be poisonous to the human body you need higher concentrations than a doping program provides. By eating meat, you can go above posinous levels, and naturally you can go short of poisonous levels but still above any threshold you use.
 
May 23, 2011
977
0
0
Visit site
hrotha said:
That's my point: it wouldn't. It wouldn't eliminate a case like the one that sparked this thread. For clen to be poisonous to the human body you need higher concentrations than a doping program provides. By eating meat, you can go above posinous levels, and naturally you can go short of poisonous levels but still above any threshold you use.

Most people who test positive did not consume enough Clen to become sick. If a substance is showing up in food at levels high enough to cause sickness then there could be ten, a hundred, a thousand times more people who unknowingly consumed Clen, not enough to cause sckness but enough to trip a test with a limit of zero. Use a reasonable limit, eliminate most of the cases of innocent athletes testing positive due to contamination, and spend resources on the tricky cases that may or may not be due to contamination.
 
Jan 14, 2011
504
0
0
Visit site
GreasyMonkey said:
Having lived in China for 4 years, married to a Chinese lass, it is absolutely no surprise to me that this has happened, yet again.
The article in the LA Times is pretty much "on the money..."

The Communist government is not the problem. The problem is that there is no protection for the weak, no consequences for the peoiple who do the contamination. I saw many similar things living in India. Rice adulterated with white stones, black legumes full of black stones etc. We had to take wheat we bought to the market and watch while it was ground to be sure we got our un-adulterated flour back. It goes on and on. Meat contamination, not so much an issue.
 
Dec 21, 2010
513
0
0
Visit site
rickshaw said:
The Communist government is not the problem. The problem is that there is no protection for the weak, no consequences for the peoiple who do the contamination. I saw many similar things living in India. Rice adulterated with white stones, black legumes full of black stones etc. We had to take wheat we bought to the market and watch while it was ground to be sure we got our un-adulterated flour back. It goes on and on. Meat contamination, not so much an issue.

Somewhat agree - the government has not established a comprehensive system of testing & certification for the food supply industry, but coupled with the greed (sometimes through neccessity) of the average farmer, it leaves a food supply system that is wide open for abuse and that allows corruption to flourish.

India is experiencing a similar problem, as a developing economy, large population with a significant ultra-rich and ultra-poor strata in the society, there will always be the potential for abuse until a mature food surveillance program of testing & certification is in place.
 
May 20, 2010
718
1
0
Visit site
hrotha said:
Which means a threshold doesn't make sense, as you can get poisonous levels of clen (higher than with any doping program and therefore higher than any reasonable threshold you set) by eating contaminated meat. Either you remove clen from the banned substances list, or you keep the no threshold policy and deal with the cases individually to see if there was no fault on the part of the athlete who tested positive.

Agree with the second option. In most cases, geographical location would provide good indication of probability of fault. On case by case assessment, given current events then benefit of doubt should be given to athlete.
 
sniper said:
I'm still waiting for the first Spanish cow to test positive for clen. :rolleyes:

Ah, sorry. You're about 21 years too late.

""Clenbuterol has been associated with the acute poisoning of humans who consumed meat from clenbuterol-fed animals," Schneider said. In Spain, clenbuterol tainting of veal and calf's liver caused 135 people to be hospitalized in 1990, and another 140 people suffered dizziness, heart palpitations, breathing difficulty, shakes, and headaches from a similar incident in February 1994."

http://www.mad-cow.org/~tom/clenbut_cheat.html
 
Moose McKnuckles said:
Ah, sorry. You're about 21 years too late.

""Clenbuterol has been associated with the acute poisoning of humans who consumed meat from clenbuterol-fed animals," Schneider said. In Spain, clenbuterol tainting of veal and calf's liver caused 135 people to be hospitalized in 1990, and another 140 people suffered dizziness, heart palpitations, breathing difficulty, shakes, and headaches from a similar incident in February 1994."

http://www.mad-cow.org/~tom/clenbut_cheat.html
Those were different times, it's in the past. I'd prefer to look forward. The herd is cleaner now.
 

TRENDING THREADS