“Don’t call yourself Chinese if you haven’t tried everything on the periodic table,” goes a saying in China, a reference to a string of food safety scandals in recent years.
In the most recent episode, 100,000 tons of smuggled frozen meat has been seized across China, some of it more than 40 years old, the state news agency Xinhua reported. The chicken wings, beef and pork uncovered in the customs operation in 14 provinces and regions were valued at up to 3 billion renminbi, or $483 million, and 20 people have been arrested, it said.
The origin of the meat was not clear. According to Xinhua, however, the meat typically was shipped to Hong Kong, then taken to Vietnam, where traders would smuggle it across the border to China without declaring it with customs officials or undergoing the required entry-exit inspection and quarantine. Some of the meat was found stamped with packing dates going back to the 1970s.
To hold down costs, the meat would be transported in ordinary, nonrefrigerated trucks, sometimes for more than 12 hours.
According to the Changsha Administration of Customs, in Hunan Province, one-third of the meat on offer at the largest wholesale market in the city was found to be illegally imported.
“It was too smelly! A truck full of it! I almost threw up when the door opened,” Zhang Tao, a Changsha official involved in the crackdown, was quoted as saying by Xinhua.
After being refrozen, the meat was distributed to retailers, supermarkets and restaurants in Guangdong, Sichuan and other provinces. China Central Television, the state broadcaster, showed workers in the southern city of Shenzhen repackaging the imported meat with Chinese labels, even though imported products, if legal, tend to be more profitable than local ones.Some of the meat was sold on the Internet. Many meat retailers have set up profiles on Taobao, the online shopping website owned by Alibaba, offering local and imported meat, often promising same-day delivery. Some claim to be selling beef imported from the United States, even though such beef has been barred from the Chinese mainland since 2003, following outbreaks of bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease.
In May, Deputy Trade Representative Robert Holleyman of the United States said that “huge amounts” of beef were bypassing the ban. American trade officials said that while it was not known how much of this smuggled beef was passing through Hong Kong, a semiautonomous Chinese territory with a separate customs system, the amount of beef entering Hong Kong from the United States alone was greater than the total consumed in Hong Kong from all sources.
“Theoretically, China has strict food safety regulations, but execution is often the problem,” Peter Cheung, director of the Food and Nutritional Science Program at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said in an interview. “I personally would not buy meat online.”
“假如你尚未把元素周期表上的全部器械都嘗過一遍，就不要說本身是中國人，”中國人用這句俗話表示比年來的連續串食物平安醜聞。
最新的一個醜聞是：據官方通信社新華社報導，中國查獲了10萬噸私運凍肉，個中一些是40多年前臨盆的。海關在14個省和地域展開的行為中，發明了貨值跨越30億元國民幣的雞翅、牛肉和豬肉等凍品，已有20人受到拘捕。
這些凍肉的起源尚不清晰。但據新華社報導，它們平日被運到香港，再發往越南，然後由商販偷運入境，既不向海關官員報告，也不舉行需要的收支境磨練檢疫。一些凍肉上的印戳表現加工時光早在20世紀70年月。
為了壓低本錢，這些凍肉會用通俗卡車，而不是冷凍卡車運輸，偶然途中會跨越12小時。
湖南省長沙海關總署表現，他們發如今該都會最大的批發市場中，有三分之一的肉類屬於不法入口。
“太臭了，整整一車箱，打開門差點吐了，”新華社引述介入此次行為的長沙官員張濤(假名)說。
這些肉類被從新冷凍後，發往廣東、四川等省的零售商、超市和餐廳。在中國官方媒體中心電視台播出的視頻中，南部都會深圳的工人用中國的標簽對這些入口肉類舉行從新包裝，固然出售正當入口的產物每每比當地肉類利潤更高。有些凍肉則在網上出售。許多肉類零售商都在阿裏巴巴旗下的購物網站淘寶上開設了網店，出售當地和入口肉類，並且每每許諾當天到貨。一些網店自稱出售美國入口的牛肉，固然自從牛海綿狀腦病即瘋牛病暴發以後，中國大陸自2003年以來已制止了這些牛肉的發賣。
本年5月，美國副商業代表羅伯特·霍利曼(Robert Holleyman)表現，繞過該禁令的牛肉“數目宏大”。美國商業官員表現，固然今朝還不清晰有若幹這類私運牛肉路過了香港，但僅從美國進港的牛肉量，就已跨越了香港消費的全部起源的牛肉量。香港是中國境內一個半自治的地區，有自力的海關體系。
“理論上講，中國有嚴厲的食物平安律例，但題目每每出在履行上，”香港中文大學食物及養分科學學科主任張誌強在接收采訪時說。“我本身不會在網上購置肉類。”
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