Shanghai-based Maling Food Co, which makes the Maling brand luncheon meat here and in Singapore, has been told to 'immediately stop' exports of all its food products, according to a statement from the Shanghai Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau.

On Monday, Hong Kong food safety authorities reported that the banned cancer-causing antibiotic, Nitrofurans, was found in a batch of Maling luncheon meat exported there.

In a statement posted on its website yesterday, Maling said it has recalled the tainted products and sent senior managers to Hong Kong.

In August, Singapore's Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA) destroyed a consignment of canned pork and suspended all imports from two food-processing plants in China producing for the Maling and Gulong brands.

It had also found traces of the antibiotic, which is fed to pigs to treat illnesses. In 2002, China banned its use in all animals reared for food.

China's export halt will affect not just Maling's meat products.

In Singapore yesterday, the AVA said at least 14 other Maling-brand canned foods have been available here.

They range from pickled cabbage and preserved vegetables to canned fruit, beans, peas, bamboo shoots and mushrooms.

An AVA spokesman said that products already here will not be pulled from the shelves as all food products on sale in Singapore have gone through stringent checks and are safe to eat.

Following the scare in Hong Kong, Maling luncheon meat has also been taken off supermarket shelves in neighbouring Guangzhou city, reported the Southern Daily newspaper on Thursday.

When reached in Shanghai yesterday, a Maling staff member who gave her name as Ms Su told The Straits Times that the likely source of the problem was the raw meat the company had been supplied with.

'It's not possible that the substance was added in the production process,' she said.

The Shanghai-listed firm is investigating its meat supply and tightening in-house procedures following the complaints from Hong Kong and Singapore, said Ms Su.

Plagued by a relentless flood of tainted food and drugs scandals in the past year, Beijing has moved aggressively in a 'special war' launched in August to improve its product safety - and to salvage China's reputation as the world's factory.

In the latest crackdown, some 1,400 of the country's more than 23,000 abattoirs were shut for failing to meet national standards, the official China Daily said yesterday.

Product safety has become a sore point in China's trade relations, with the United States set to put it high on the agenda at next week's high-level Sino-US trade talks.

US Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson told The New York Times in an interview published yesterday: 'What we need to do with China is deal with the most important issues of concern to Americans...right now, product and food safety is the No.1 issue.'

simcy@sph.com.sg

ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY THAM YUEN-C IN SINGAPORE