Friday - May 03, 2013

Rats, The Other Other White Meat

Rat Meat Sold as Lamb Highlights Food Fears in China

Even for China’s scandal-numbed diners, news that the lamb simmering in the pot may actually be rat took the country’s endless outrages about food hazards into a new realm of disgust. In an announcement intended to show that the government is serious about improving food safety, the Ministry of Public Security said over the Internet on Thursday that the police had caught traders in eastern China who bought rat, fox and mink flesh and sold it as mutton. But that and other cases of meat smuggling, faking and adulteration that were also featured in Chinese newspapers and Web sites on Friday were unlikely to instill confidence in consumers already queasy over many reports about meat, fruit and vegetables laden with disease, toxins, banned dyes and preservatives.

Sixty-three people were arrested and are accused of “buying fox, mink and rat and other meat products that had not undergone inspection,” which they doused in gelatin, red pigment, and nitrates, and sold as mutton in Shanghai and adjacent Jiangsu Province for about $1.6 million, according to the ministry’s statement. The account did not explain how exactly the traders acquired the rats and other creatures.

“How many rats does it take to put together a sheep?” said one typically baffled and angry user of Sina Weibo, China’s Twitter-like microblog service that often acts as a forum for public venting. “Is it cheaper to raise rats than sheep? Or does it just not feel right unless you’re making fakes?”

The arrests were part of a nationwide operation since late January to “attack food safety crimes and defend the safety of the dining table,” the ministry said. The police arrested 904 people suspected of selling fake, diseased, toxic or adulterated meat, and broke up 1,721 illicit factories, workshops and shops. Yet the ministry acknowledged that diners still had reason to worry.

In food safety campaigns in past years “some serious problems have been dealt with swiftly and vigorously, but for a variety of reasons, food safety crimes remain serious, and are displaying new circumstances and features,” an unnamed senior official said in the statement.

“For example, there is selling of meat injected with water and meat from animals dead from disease, as well as passing off relatively cheap types of meat as relatively expensive beef and mutton.”

I wonder if any of those tens of thousands of dead bloated pigs going down the rivers a few weeks ago ever made it to the sea? And all those ducks and chickens “destroyed” because of avian flu. Makes me wonder if they weren’t, ahem, “recycled” in one way or another. Because ... crivens, one thousand seven hundred and twenty one illicit meat processing FACTORIES. I’d be amazed if they had that many proper meat processing centers.

China. Land of the Big Lie.

Despite an ongoing crackdown, “food safety crimes are still prominent, and new situations are emerging with new characteristics,” the ministry’s statement said. Police seized more than 20,000 tons of fake or mislabeled meat products during the nationwide sweep, the ministry said.

Food safety is a major issue in China, where public anxiety over cases of fake or toxic food can spread quickly. In April, many consumers lost their appetite for poultry as an outbreak of the H7N9 bird flu virus spread in China, Reuters reported. And in March, more than 16,000 rotting pig carcasses were found floating in one of Shanghai’s main sources of water.

More than a billion and a quarter hungry mouths to feed in China. Push comes to shove, they’ll eat anything. Or anyone. So may as well just fess up, and sell the stuff as what it is. It’s not like they haven’t been eating rat all along anyway.

PS - a typical rat weighs about a pound. Take away bones, hide, guts, and blood, and you’ve got about half a pound of meat per adult rat. 20,000 tons is 40,000,000 pounds, equivalent to EIGHTY MILLION RATS. So actually they need 10 times more, every day, just to feed themselves.



How many rats must a man chow down
Before you call him Chinese?
How many times the ingredients faked
Before the world’s fed up and leaves?
Yes, how many imports must be made with poison
Before they’re forever banned?
The answer my friend, is brought here from Shanghai
The answer is brought here from Shanghai.

Posted by Drew458     on 05/03/2013 at 10:46 AM   
Filed Under: • CHINA in the news •  
• Comments (5) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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