A shipment of frozen pork ribs imported from the US was destroyed in Taiwan after it was found to contain the banned substance ractopamine, a drug put in feed to make pigs raised for meat leaner.

The Keelung Customs Office said the 1,360-kilogramme shipment of pork ribs was brokered through customs on March 29. The importer decided not to return the pork ribs to the shipper, because the value of the shipment, NT$47,790 (US$1,520), was lower than the transportation costs US$2,000.

Officials from the Bureau of Animal and Plant Health Inspection and Quarantine, Bureau of Standards, Metrology and Inspection, and customs, were on hand to see the pork ribs taken out of their container and destroyed in an incinerator.

The frozen pork ribs were found to have contained 1.18 ppb of ractopamine, an additive allowed by only five countries and banned by Taiwan.

Recently, a customs official was found to have collaborated with a trading company in Taipei City to allow in frozen Matsuzaka beef from Japan, which has been barred from entering Taiwan since 2001 after Japan reported an outbreak of mad cow disease.

To prevent custom corruption, politicians has sought to propose in the legislature that in the future, the process of destroying any seized commodities should be recorded for monitoring purposes.