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China dismisses beverage contamination rumor

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-09-24 23:52

BEIJING -- China's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (GAQSIQ) said here on Wednesday that some media reports on the contamination of certain domestic liquor, wine and beer products were "not in line with facts".

Some media reports appeared on the website on Tuesday said that following the tainted milk powder scandal, the country's quality watchdog conducted liquor, wine and beer product sample surveys, and spotted sodium nitrite, a carcinogenic substance, in several products.

These brands included Kweichow Maotai, one of the country's best known high-end spirits, Tsingtao Beer, ChangYu Pioneer Wine Co., Ltd., a leading domestic wine producer and Great Wall Wine.

"The GAQSIQ did not carry out quality surveys on these brands recently," it said.

The board of directors of southwestern Guizhou-based Kweichow Maotai Co., Ltd. said on Tuesday evening in a website statement that the company had never added sodium nitrite into the liquor, and there was no possibility that the liquor is contaminated by this chemical in the process of production, shipping and sales.

Tsingtao Beer also said on its official website in a statement that the company had never added sodium nitrite into the products in the production process and there was zero possibility that the beer contained this chemical.

"In recent years, United States, Japan and the European Union, which usually have very stringent food quality standards, found no quality problems in our beer upon quality tests," said the eastern Shandong-based brewery.