Hong Kong health expert calls for more food tests amid cancer scare

0 Comments | AFP, August, 2005

HONG KONG (AFP) — A health expert and activist urged Hong Kong's government to step up testing of imported food following the discovery of a cancer-causing chemical in freshwater fish from China.

The call came a day after Chinese health officials unexpectedly halted exports of fish from the mainland for the second time in two weeks amid growing concern over the presence in some samples of a toxic industrial dye.

The crisis is the latest in a string of health scares involving food imported from China, the southern territory's largest source of produce. Pork imports were earlier halted after 39 people died in mainland China of a pig-borne disease.

Legislator Kwok Ka-ki, a family doctor and influential health campaigner, said there was only one way the...