If you have ordered lamb or mutton for hotpot in Shanghai over
the last four years, you might have been served rat, fox or mink, the
Ministry of Public Security said on Thursday.
"Since
2009, the suspect, surnamed Wei, has bought foxes, minks, rats and
other uninspected meat products in Shandong," the ministry said in a
press release on its website.
"After adding gelatine, carmine,
nitrate and other substances, he sold the meat as fake lamb rolls [for
hot pot] at farmers' markets in Jiangsu and Shanghai."
Wei's
organisation was raided in Jiangsu and Shanghai in February, which led
to the arrest of 63 suspects and the seizure of 10 tons of meat and
additives.
Police estimates that Wei's sales over the last four years have reached a value of 10 million yuan (HK$12.6 million).
In
March, police in Baotou, a city in the Inner Mongolian Autonomous
Region, stopped a company that since 2010 has been producing beef jerky
from duck meat and selling it in 15 Chinese provinces. Almost 15 tons of
the fake jerky were confiscated.
These are two of 10
stomachs-wrenching cases the ministry listed as exemplary of a crackdown
on food product fraud - meat of diseased animals, steroid-manipulated
meat and sewer oil - that started two weeks before Chinese New Year, on
January 25.
Over the last three months, authorities throughout
China have seized some 20,000 tons in counterfeit meat and arrested
3,576 suspects in the operation, dealing "a heavy blow to the arrogance
of criminals", the ministry said.
The campaign comes amid a growing shortage in agricultural products and a general sense of anxiety over food security.
The
task of providing an adequate supply of safe food would be "very
tough", Agriculture Minister Han Changfu said at a meeting in December.
In 2010, some 300,000 children got sick after consuming melamine-tainted milk products.
Studies
last year showed excessive amounts of heavy metals in rice from several
regions. In 2005, a fake chicken egg producer's website boasted
producing 1,500 eggs a day out of paraffin wax and algae.
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