Two chefs at a restaurant in Jiangsu, China, have been sentenced to prison for lacing thousands of dishes with antidiarrheal drugs to ensure stale ingredients didn’t upset people’s stomachs.

On July 30th, the Market Management Bureau of Chongzhou District, Nantong City, issued a statement announcing that two chefs who had worked at a local hotel restaurant had been sentenced to prison and forced to pay a fine of 160,000 yuan ($22,000) for serving “toxic and harmful food” laced with gentamicin sulfate, an antibiotic used to treat diarrhea. The two perpetrators had reportedly been using expired ingredients in their dishes and laced them with gentamicin to minimize the risk of patrons suffering from upset stomachs. According to a police investigation, the chefs sold at least 1,612 servings of gentamicin sulfate-laced food.

8World recently reported that the bizarre case was brought to the attention of the Market Management Bureau by an employee of the Guanyinshan Garden Hotel who reported that the chefs there used gentamicin to negate the effects of expired food ingredients. Dishes like braised fish maw with chicken sauce and braised tendons with chicken sauce were laced with gentamicin sulfate at a rate of “one injection per table” to ensure it had the expected effect.

When police raided the Nantong City restaurant, they found 101 boxes of gentamicin sulfate in the kitchen, which had been bought by a hotel handyman surnamed Zhang. The investigation that followed revealed that Zhang regularly bought around 100 boxes at a time without providing a prescription.

Earlier this year, the two chefs, known only as Sha and Fu, were found guilty of selling contaminated dishes for monetary gain and sentenced to two years and one year and six months in prison respectively, and forced to pay a 160,000 yuan fine.

“This is using one criminal method to cover up another food crime. It is both extremely stupid and extremely greedy,” Chinese newspaper The Paper noted.