Briefings - 1034. page

Outlook Magazine published an article, disclosing that many farmers in China have over-used antibiotics in raising animals, causing meat, eggs, and milk to contain antibiotic residues. Some farmers sell animal products after feeding antibiotics to sick animals. Some farmers routinely feed animals with low doses of antibiotics, though the animals are not sick. These practices produce more resistant bacteria among animals and also threaten human health.

The average Chinese consumes 138 gram of antibiotics per year, the highest in the world and ten times the amount used in the U.S. on an average basis. Among the antibiotics users, only 20% truly need them and 80% are abusers.

Source: Outlook Magazine, April 12, 2010
http://news.sohu.com/20100412/n271440936.shtml

From March 28 to April 1, Xinhua consecutively published five commentaries against local governments on selling land to increase income. The key points of the commentaries were: (1) land-selling based local finance policies are an overdraft that’s not sustainable; (2) local governments must change the mentality of real estate speculation; (3) the entire government real estate approval process should be transparent to avoid corruption; (4) land monopoly causes vicious competition and pushes land prices up; (5) the high profit and immediate contribution to GDP (which is a major measurement of a government’s performance) discourages local government’s willingness to control housing price.

Source: Xinhua, April 4, 2010
http://news.xinhuanet.com/house/2010-04/04/content_13297657.htm