Meat traders indicted over fake mutton
By Matthew Strong
Taiwan News, Staff Writer
2015-09-02 05:50 PM
AIPEI (Taiwan News) – Two meat traders were indicted Wednesday for having sold fake mutton mixed in with water or with other meat products to 66 clients all over Taiwan.
The scam, which was discovered by Kaohsiung prosecutors last year, involved 182,000 tons of mutton which was sold over 11 months to a variety of businesses, including hotpot restaurants and nightmarket stallholders.
The practice came to light after a diner complained that the mutton he had been served tasted like pork, reports said. The investigation found pork DNA in the meat.
Ho Kuo-jung, 44, the head of companies named as Huayuan and Weifeng, reacted to the rising price of imported mutton by telling his employees to collect certain types of pork and mix them with mutton, prosecutors said. The companies sold nearly 9,000 boxes of mutton rolls to 18 customers from January to November last year, for a value of NT$22.7 million (US$698,000), according to prosecutors.
In addition, Ho also used the excess mutton oil to make pork rolls which he presented as pure pork to his customers, making NT$28.7 million (US$883,000).
Another meat trader, Chinlung Meats chief Huang Chien-hui, 58, specialized in mixing mutton with pork to produce mutton rolls for use in hotpots. The process earned him NT$35.2 million (US$1 million) from sales to 48 clients, prosecutors said.
Taiwan has been reeling under a series of food safety scandals which started about two years ago. Several of the scandals involved the use of industrial products in food destined for human consumption.
