Chinese customs officials have seized about 3 billion yuan (US$483.4 million) worth of smuggled meat, some more than 40 years old and rotting, the China Daily said yesterday, the latest in a grim series of food safety scares.
Beijing toughened food safety rules in April to shake off a reputation for safety scandals that range from donkey meat tainted with fox DNA to milk contaminated with industrial chemical melamine that killed at least six infants in 2008.
Chinese authorities have launched a crackdown on beef and frozen meat smuggling, in addition to a campaign last year to stamp out the smuggling of farm products.
Authorities had arrested 21 criminal gangs by this month, leading to seizures of more than 100,000 tonnes of smuggled meat, including chicken wings, beef and pork, Xinhua news agency said.
In one raid, police in Hunan Province arrested 20 people.
Customs officials found that some of the meat was more than 40 years old, meaning it dated back to the 1970s.
Other parts were rotten and decomposing, the China Daily said.
It was not clear if the seized meat had been destroyed.
“It was smelly and I nearly threw up when I opened the door,” Chinese Customs Administration official Zhang Tao (張濤) told the newspaper.
Industry sources said hundreds of thousands of tonnes of beef are being smuggled into China via Hong Kong and Vietnam from countries such as Brazil and India, sidestepping Beijing’s import curbs.
Meat can last for a long time if continuously frozen, but smuggled meat is often moved under poor storage conditions that lead to repeated thawing, making it eventually go bad.
“To save costs, smugglers often hire ordinary vehicles instead of refrigerated ones, so the meat has often thawed out several times before reaching customers,” Changsha anti-smuggling official Yang Bo (楊波) told the paper.
In related developments, China’s food safety watchdog has asked three milk producers in Shaanxi Province to recall substandard infant formula milk powder and urged local authorities to punish the firms severely if they have broken the law.
The Chinese Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday said on its Web site that excessive nitrate was found in five batches of milk powder products made by Shaanxi Guanshan Dairy Co (陜西飛鶴關山乳業有限責任公司) and tested earlier this year.
Higher than standard levels of selenium were found in another two batches of milk powder produced by Xi’an Guanshan Dairy Co (西安飛鶴關山乳業有限公司) and Shengtang Industry Co (陜西聖唐秦龍乳業有限公司). All the products were made from goat’s milk.
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