• By Shelley Shan / Staff reporter

The National Sports Training Center would refrain from using US pork as an ingredient in meals served to athletes, as ractopamine is listed by the World Anti-Doping Agency as a banned substance, Sports Administration Director-General Chang Shao-hsi (張少熙) has said.

The center serves as the training base for the nation’s top athletes scheduled to compete in the Tokyo Olympic Games next year.

Chang said in an interview with the Central News Agency that allowing the importation of US pork containing ractopamine is a national policy, but athletes are a special group of people.

Photo: CNA

“We would make sure that the athletes need not have to worry about whether what they eat in the center could get them in trouble. My job is to make sure that all the cattle in the bullpen are well taken care of,” Chang said during the interview.

The center would also conduct daily, weekly and monthly inspections of the food served at the center, so that the athletes can be assured of the safety of the food they consume, Chang said.

The center would also reinforce athletes’ education on how they should eat when they are not in the center, he added.

“The center would protect them from consuming pork containing ractopamine residue, but it would not be able to protect them when they are outside, where they could consume meatballs and steamed buns with pork from questionable sources,” he said.

The center can only ask the athletes to be responsible for what they eat and that they should ascertain the source of the food before they consume it, Chang added.

During a visit to the center last week, he instructed the center to recruit experts to identify meat products containing ractopamine residue and determine how long the residue can remain in the human body, Chang said.