No clause to China reward for "tainted" hairy crabs

BEIJING, Oct 24 (Reuters) A Chinese exporter of much prized hairy crabs has offered a million yuan reward to any Taiwan official who can find a carcinogen in any of its product, state media reported today.

Health officials in Taiwan last week impounded a batch of hairy crabs from Yangcheng Lake in China's eastern Jiangsu province, claiming they were found to contain nitrofuran an antibiotic linked to cancer.

''The inspectors will be rewarded one million yuan if they detect any carcinogen in our hairy crabs,'' the Shanghai Daily quoted Gong Binglong, chairman of a Yangcheng Lake crab farmers' association in Bacheng town, as saying.

Taiwan and China have been political and military rivals since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949 but trade, investment and tourism have blossomed across the Taiwan Strait since the late 1980s.

Trade in vegetables, specifically bananas at the moment, and other food often becomes a political hot potato in the absence of diplomatic ties.

Yangcheng Lake hairy crabs regarded as a delicacy throughout Asia support several hundred crab farming families and contribute over 1 billion yuan to Bacheng's regional economy, the Shanghai Daily reported.

Around 10 per cent of China's Yangcheng Lake hairy crabs are exported to markets including Hong Kong, Taiwan and Malaysia.

The health scare had prompted probes by several mainland food safety watchdogs, but crab-related tourism to Yangcheng Lake had not been affected, the paper said.

An inspection by Beijing's Municipal Food Safety Office into crabs at several wholesale markets had turned up no carcinogens, Xinhua said in a separate report.

Several health scares have plagued China's freshwater exports in recent years.

Last August, South Korean officials found carcinogens in imported Chinese carp at a wholesale market, shortly after exports of Chinese-farmed eels to Hong Kong were discovered to contain malachite green, a cancer-causing chemical used by fish farmers to kill parasites, but banned in China and many other countries.

REUTERS SY BST0937