120 tonnes of spoiled food seized from smugglers in Nanning, Guangxi
Frozen meat smuggled from Vietnam included discoloured, years-old chicken and pig parts
PUBLISHED : Sunday, 13 April, 2014, 5:17am
UPDATED : Sunday, 13 April, 2014, 5:17am
Mandy Zuo [email protected]
Putrid chicken feet were among the haul seized. Photo: Reuters
Guangxi authorities have seized 120 tonnes of frozen spoiled meat, including chicken feet and pig feet and ears smuggled from Vietnam, state media reported, with some of it produced four years ago.
The food, seized from two companies in Nanning, was smuggled via border cities including Dongxing and Pingxiang, Xinhua reported.
The frozen meat at one company, described as blackening or yellowing, was expected to be sold in major cities and provinces including Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu and Guangdong, according to freight orders discovered at the storage, it said.
A staff worker was quoted as saying the meat began piling up there in October last year.
About 100 tonnes of the seized meat was beef, chicken wings and feet from one company and the rest was beef, pig feet, chicken wings and feet from another, Xinhua said.
The discovery was made by an inspection team from the autonomous region government as it was checking on transport and storage at major frozen meat markets in Nanning during a recent crackdown on smuggling.
Food safety has become a serious concern among consumers following scandals involving melamine-tainted milk powder and rat meat sold as lamb.
In one recent case, seven people were held in Guangdong province for injecting dirty pond water into lamb meat to increase its weight and raise its price, China Central Television reported in January.
The Food and Drug Administration last month ordered local governments to tighten scrutiny of food suppliers and dealers, and to better monitor expired food.
Food and drug supervision departments at all government levels received 270,000 complaints from the public last year, up by 30 per cent from a year earlier, the administration said earlier last week.
