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Almost 40 new-born babies have been rescued from a puppy farm-style baby factory by police in China.

The factories were filled with pregnant women who were given food and a place to sleep, and then paid up to £10,000 after giving birth.

Higher price tabs were put on boys, in a country awash with girls due to Beijing’s one-child policy.

Police revealed the children were fed on inappropriate food, including a pot-noddle style dish given to the slightly older children, as they waited to be sold-off.

Many of the 37 rescued infants were infected with diseases probably passed on from their mother, or from the unhygienic conditions.

(Image: CEN)

Over 100 gang members were also arrested in the raid on the illegal baby-producing factory in the city of Jining in eastern China’s Shandong province.

A police spokesman said: “Thirty-seven newborn babies were found and none of them were healthy, with at least seven having a sexually-transmitted disease or AIDS.

“The conditions in the factory were unhygienic and totally unsuitable for unsupervised childbirth and the babies were taken from the mothers as soon as they were born.

“We also found evidence that they were being fed takeaway noodles and leftovers.

“The mothers arrived here en masse where they gave birth and then left with a pile of money.”

(Image: CEN)

The director of the Ministry of Public Security and Anti-trafficking, Chen Shigu, branded the baby factories as a “relatively new form of child trafficking”.

He said: “In some cases the gang targeted women who were already pregnant and offered them large amounts of money to hand the baby over.

“In other cases they paid the women to get pregnant.

“This is a relatively new form of child trafficking and differs from the traditional form which usually sees the children stolen.”

He added that women involved in the selling of newborns could get anything between £5,000 and £9,000 for boys, while girls brought a little less.

Baby-selling in China is illegal and those found guilty face stiff jail sentences or even death if they sell more than three children.

Last year police launched an investigation into a Japanese man who is believed to have fathered at least 12 babies with surrogate mothers at a Thai "baby factory".