Athletes competing at the 2008 Beijing Olympics will need to be wary of positive drugs test when sampling some of China's chemical-laden foods, a top Chinese doping expert has warned.

Some Chinese food is contaminated with banned drugs such as anabolic steroids making a positive test a very real possibility, said Yang Shumin, the former head of China's Olympic doping control centre and an expert on anabolic steroids.

"Concern about it goes to the top of the Chinese Government," said Yang, now a researcher at the doping control centre advising the government on food safety.

Athletes caught doping rarely confess, and invent dubious stories about spiked food and drink or medicine that turned out to contain banned substances.

"Those stories could be true in 2008," Yang said.

In China, food safety is a major issue for all. Many of the hundreds of millions of China's farmers buy anabolic steroids for their livestock and antibiotics for their fowl from salesmen promising better prices for bigger pigs and healthier ducks.

Dangerous pesticides, fertilizers and chemical additives used to beautify the produce also combine with heavy metals washed into the food chain through contaminated rivers and streams.

Add to that poor hygiene and food handling, and the recipe for regular mass food-poisoning outbreaks is complete.

In one recent case that raised alarm bells at BOCOG, 336 people fell sick in Shanghai in September after eating pork contaminated with anabolic steroids.

Sales of turbot, a popular flatfish, were also banned in parts of eastern China this month after discovering they contained high-levels of carcinogens stemming from antibiotics.

Other food scares have centered on duck eggs dyed with dangerous chemicals and snails infested by parasites that brought down 90 Beijing diners with meningitis.

Although it is aware of the wider problem, the Chinese leadership has focused on the Olympics, staking its prestige on staging a drug-free Olympiad.

"The Chinese Government cares. They don't want to lose face because of doping. And that does not just apply to Chinese athletes. It applies to all athletes," said Yang. "So we are doing our best to prevent any drugs getting into athletes' systems."

The government has issued what it calls a "dead order" - one that must be obeyed at all costs - on food safety at the Olympic village where most of the athletes will stay during the August 8-24 games. Any Chinese official caught flouting this rule will meet with the severest punishment.

A high-tech surveillance system will be used to trace the entire food supply chain for the athletes, from production and processing to delivery at the village. However, problems may begin when athletes step outside the sanitized confines of their temporary home.

Chinese officials were stunned to hear that athletes taking part in the World Junior Championships in Beijing in August ate raw meat on the streets.

"This is very dangerous," he said. "Top athletes are very clear about this. They won't buy anything they are not sure of."

(China Daily November 30, 2006)