China says firm linked to Panama cough syrup deaths wasn't licensed to sell medicine

A Chinese company that sold a batch of diethylene glycol, a chemical cousin of antifreeze, which ended up in Panamanian medicines that killed at least 51 people had no license to sell pharmaceuticals, the government said Tuesday.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said an investigation into the source of the deadly medicine revealed the Chinese company that originally sold it, which she did not identify, was only authorized to sell chemicals for industrial use.

"This morning we contacted the State Food and Drug Administration, which investigated the matter half a year ago," Jiang said. "According to the investigation, the relevant company is not an enterprise for medicine production but is licensed to make chemical-grade material."

"The production of medicine and supplementary materials is strictly regulated in China," she said.

The brief comments were Beijing's first public acknowledgment that it had investigated claims that a Chinese manufacturer was to blame for the deaths.

However, Jiang did not make clear how Chinese-made industrial chemicals ended up in medicine or say whether anyone in China was criminally liable for the deaths.

The New York Times newspaper said in an investigative report published Sunday that China's Taixing Glycerine Factory made the diethylene glycol and fraudulently passed it off as 99.5 percent pure glycerin to a Spanish company, Rasfer International, which in turn sold it to Panama's Medicom SA. Medicom then sold it to a government laboratory.

Telephone calls to Taixing on Tuesday were not answered. The company's Web site says it sells industrial glycerin for use in such things as cosmetics, toothpaste and printing ink.

Glycerin, which is often processed from animal fats and occurs naturally in the human body, is a sweet liquid that can give cough syrup and other remedies thickness while preventing them from dissolving in water. It is used in many kinds of medicines all over the world.

Jiang said China's State Food and Drug Administration launched its investigation at the request of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. She gave no further details.

No one in China has been charged with causing the Panamanian deaths.

The Times quoted an unidentified SFDA spokeswoman as saying the company had not broken any laws.

The contaminated material was in cough syrup, antihistamine tablets, calamine lotion and rash ointment made in a Panama government laboratory.

The first documented poisonings were reported in October, but Panamanian authorities said there may have been earlier cases that went undetected. Fifty-one people died after taking the tainted medications and 68 were hospitalized.

Concerns about the safety of imports from China rose in the U.S. after pet food containing a Chinese ingredient was found to be tainted with another industrial chemical, melamine. The chemical has killed or sickened an unknown number of dogs and cats and led to the recall of more than 100 brands of pet food.