The ethics of Chinese scholars have come under intense scrutiny following a recent scandal in the country. In mid-February, 80 people in Guangzhou city were poisoned after eating pork that contained ractopamine, a drug that ensures pigs grow big and lean. It has been banned as an agricultural food additive in China for seven years.

At first, this appeared to be yet another food safety story, but subsequent investigations have turned it into a debate about scholarly ethics. According to a report in the Southern Weekend newspaper, academics have allegedly taken part in the research, production and distribution of agricultural food additives such as ractopamine and clenbuterol hydrochloride for the past two decades, despite being aware they are poisonous. Ironically, research into clenbuterol hydrochloride in China reached its peak at the end of the 1980s, just as Europe and the US were banning it in response to the poisoning of hundreds of people in Spain, France, Italy and America.

One of the whistleblowers who spoke to Southern Weekend is a former academic at the College of Animal Science at Zhejiang University. He alleged that during research studies conducted in the early 1990s, he and his team learnt of the side-effects of clenbuterol hydrochloride, and also heard that it had been banned by the US Food and Drug Administration. However, they omitted this information from their papers on the drug. “If we talk about side-effects in the papers, they won’t get published,” he explains.

Moreover it was reported that in 1993, Zhejiang University’s Sunny Nutrition Technology Co. Ltd was founded and became a key distributor of clenbuterol hydrochloride. Through product and technology transfer, the Institute of Feed Science at Zhejiang University fostered many agricultural feed enterprises in China, with its turnover growing to more than 3.5 billion yuan (Rs.2,430 crore).

Clenbuterol hydrochloride and ractopamine were banned by the ministry of agriculture in 1997 and 2002 respectively, yet they are being researched and marketed. A big difference in terms of potential harm is that while clenbuterol hydrochloride was used primarily by small farms, ractopamine has been targeted at bigger farms, in the search for greater profits. It is alleged that some “experts” even give instructions to clients about how they can ensure their pigs pass testing by the authorities.

While topics such as plagiarism trigger doubts about scholarly ethics, the pig-feed scandal has raised more profound issues for China’s universities. Fu Jianfeng, an investigative reporter of Southern Weekend, argues that it proves that some scholars are too close to vested interests and that in the extreme instances “their research is based on greed”.

An editorial in Southern Metropolitan News blamed universities too, arguing that the trend towards “co-operation” with business has played a part. It said that because of meagre government funding, universities switch to research projects to satisfy business needs. “In so many cases, the outcome is that public trust in scholars is compromised,” says its edit.

(Excerpted and adapted from Times Higher Education)