Two chefs at a restaurant in Jiangsu, China, have reportedly been sentenced to jail time for lacing thousands of dishes with anti-diarrheal drugs to prevent the expired ingredients from upsetting persons stomach.

Two chefs, known only as Sha and Fu, were sentenced to two years and one year and six months in prison respectively after being found guilty of selling contaminated dishes for monetary gain, Global Times reports

It’s reported that on July 30, the Market Management Bureau of Chongzhou District, Nantong City, issued a statement announcing that “two chefs who worked at a local hotel restaurant were sentenced to prison and ordered to pay a 160,000 yuan ($22,000) fine for serving “toxic and harmful food” laced with “gentamicin sulfate,” an antibiotic used to treat diarrhoea.

The bizarre case was brought to the attention of the Market Management Bureau by an employee of the Guanyinshan Garden Hotel, who reported the chefs’ nefarious tactic to negate the effects of expired food ingredients, as per 8World.

A subsequent raid of the premises by the Police saw 101 boxes of drugs discovered in the kitchen said to have been bought by a hotel handyman identified as Zhang.

The investigation later revealed that Zhang frequently purchased large quantities of the substance at a time without providing a prescription

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