RPT-China seizes $483 mln of smuggled meat, some 40 years

[frigidmagi]

reuters

Chinese customs have seized around 3 billion yuan ($483 million) worth of smuggled meat, some more than 40 years old and rotting, the official China Daily said on Wednesday, 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 busted 21 criminal gangs by June, leading to seizures of more than 100,000 tonnes of smuggled meat, including chicken wings, beef and pork, state news agency Xinhua said. In one bust, police in southern Hunan province arrested 20 people.

Customs officials found 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 newspaper 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," administration official Zhang Tao told the newspaper.

Industry sources say hundreds of thousands of tonnes of beef is being smuggled into China via neighbouring Hong Kong and Vietnam, from countries such as Brazil and India, to sidestep 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," Yang Bo, an anti-smuggling official in Changsha told the paper. ($1=6.2088 Chinese yuan renminbi) (Reporting by Adam Jourdan; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)

[Norseman]

reuters

Chinese customs have seized around 3 billion yuan ($483 million) worth of smuggled meat, some more than 40 years old and rotting, the official China Daily said on Wednesday, the latest in a grim series of food safety scares.

And this is the real reason that China has banned time-travel, they are worrying about meat-smugglers from the 70s. If they're not vigilant those guys might bring back disco.

But seriously China is just so big and such a huge market and manufactory that anything that can happen will happen there, to be honest I'm just surprised that they haven't bought the butter mountain and the milk-lake that's been building up in the EU also since the 70s. Or perhaps that will be the next scandal.

[LadyTevar]

Frozen meat, 40 years old? And they were going to try to sell it as this year's? Where did they find this meat to begin with, why hadn't it been used 40yrs ago? How the fuck did it get into China? Was it actually IN CHINA that long? Was there an abandoned meat shop that still had a working dep freeze, or what?!

And the rotted meat wasn't the same batch, from the article... but if they hid it in something spicy, or used it for dog/cat chow, no one would have noticed.

[frigidmagi]

Frozen meat, 40 years old? And they were going to try to sell it as this year's? Where did they find this meat to begin with, why hadn't it been used 40yrs ago? How the fuck did it get into China? Was it actually IN CHINA that long? Was there an abandoned meat shop that still had a working dep freeze, or what?!

Back of freezer. It seems among meat smugglers stock rotation is an arcane and largely unknown sorcerous art.

[Norseman]

Frozen meat, 40 years old? And they were going to try to sell it as this year's? Where did they find this meat to begin with, why hadn't it been used 40yrs ago? How the fuck did it get into China? Was it actually IN CHINA that long? Was there an abandoned meat shop that still had a working dep freeze, or what?!

I am going to guess that it is superfluous meat that just didn't get sold, as in agricultural overproduction (over quota) from some western country where the state is obliged to buy that sort of thing. I wasn't really kidding when I talked about the butter mountain and milk lake, there are huge stores of frozen food, some of it very old indeed. If it is frozen cold enough the stuff should be safe for decades.

Of course the smugglers seemed to neglect the bit about keeping it frozen.