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Guangdong Police Seize Beef Jerky Made With Diseased Pork

Posted: 12/23/2014 9:30 am

As tasty as good bit of beef jerky can be, you may want to avoid it over the next few months. According to a report from Nandu, 25.4 tons of pork taken from diseased pigs was dried and passed off as beef jerky.

The diseased pork, taken from 34 dead whole pigs, was seized in Zhaoping, Guangdong during undercover police raids. The operation involved police officers disguised as fisherman. During a 45 hour sting operation, undercover police were led to a filthy factory space hidden up in the mountains, where the dead pigs were discovered.

Much of the substandard pork was to be used for resale in markets, however some of it was packaged as beef jerky and sold in Guangzhou, Foshan, Zhongshan and Jiangmen.

Selling substandard pork is a profitable trade. The tainted meat sells for approximately RMB 50 cents per 500 grams, yet after it has been smoked and processed with food additives, traders can fetch upwards of RMB 67 cents.

Photos: Huffington Post;

 

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Popular Beef Strips In China Contain No Beef Whatsoever

Posted: 12/17/2014 11:08 am

yisi beef strips siwei foodsIf you have ever wondered how beef strips can be sold as snacks for such a low price in China, it could be because the snack contains no beef whatsoever.

Yisi brand beef strips made by Siwei Foods have been accused in a Zhejiang court of being a counterfeit product because they don’t contain any beef. The brand has been around for 20 years, but only recently has it come to light that Yisi’s beef strips are made of pork infused with “beef paste” and other additives. Yum.

A consumer group looked closely at Siwei Foods’ five spice hand-pulled beef strips last year and said a lack of protein raised suspicions, which lead to an August 28 raid on Siwei Foods and another company, Lianxin Foods.

A 33 year-old Zhejiang man named Zhang was the head of the company, having taken over in 2007. He began to substitute pork for beef in 2012 to cut costs. The change was so lucrative that Zhang’s sister and husband soon started another company called Chengjia Foods, which also replaced beef with pork.

Thirty-seven people were arrested when police moved in on the operation. It found to make pork taste like beef, the strips need to be soaked in water to make the grains larger and more beef-like. Then they’re topped off with the beef paste and additives.

Photo: Southern Report

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KFC Chicken Wings in China, Complete with Deep-Fried Feathers

Posted: 12/16/2014 3:46 pm

kfc chicken feathersA KFC diner in Shaanxi was surprised to bite down and discover her fried chicken wing still had feathers attached to it.

READ: Guangzhou Woman Finds Live Worms in Her KFC

Miss Gao was eating at the popular fast-food chain with her friends on December 10 when she came across a strange-looking chicken wing. She said it was larger than average and had deep-fried tendrils coming out of it. She then notified staff, and the media.

A KFC company representative confirmed that the wing still had feathers, but blamed the company’s suppliers for the mistake.

kfc chicken feathersNow the local Qindu District food and drug inspection agency is investigating, and will look at the operation of the restaurant, cold storage, and how raw ingredients are prepared.

READ: More trouble for KFC: Foshan man drinks beetle found in his milk tea

It hasn’t been a good year for western fast food outlets in China, and KFC in particular. Earlier this year, KFC, McDonalds, and Pizza Hut were hit by a food safety scandal when their supplier, Husi Foods, was discovered using expired meat products.

kfc chicken feathersKFC hasn’t fully recovered since the scandal. The fast-food chain suffered a 15 percent drop in sales in November. As a result of the sales slump, KFC said it will push ahead with plans to revamp the menu and prices.

READ: Amid Sales Decline, KFC Transforms Menu for Chinese Tastes

kfc chicken feathers

Related:

Photos: CCTV, China Commerce Network

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Shenzhen Supermarket Produce Covered in Unsafe Pesticides

Posted: 11/20/2014 12:11 pm

Shenzhen is no stranger to food scandals, and it appears another issue has cropped up that is giving buyers of fresh produce some concern.

A recent study by Ceda Farm Produce Test Center, which tests farm produce headed to Hong Kong, found that 11 percent of produce sampled from Shenzhen supermarkets and wet markets contained unsafe levels of pesticide residue.

The center conducted tests on 473 samples of meat and vegetables from 39 locations to obtain its results, which prompted lawmakers to call a hearing with representatives of the local food safety watchdog.

A local lawmaker named Huang Xiang said the government had previously been told that only 4 percent of the city’s produce had pesticide levels that were too high. He questioned why this discrepancy existed.

The representative from the city’s farm produce testing center, Wang Duojia, claimed that the test could have been skewed by a number of things. Lawmakers were not satisfied by this explanation and implored the city’s food safety watchdog to improve.

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Dead Fish From Guangzhou Park Resold at Local Market

Posted: 10/29/2014 3:32 pm

lake liwan dead fish guangzhouA number of dead fish have been recently floating on the surface of the water near the flood gates of Lake Liwan Park. While any widespread loss of wildlife is usually cause for concern, some Guangzhou residents are viewing this as a “windfall” and turning it into a profit-making opportunity.

A representative for the park said the lake has been dredged over the past two weeks, something a park worker admits may have to do with the death of the fish. A park security guard said local residents have been coming to the park to collect the dead African carp and sell them for RMB 5 for a large one, and RMB 3 for small one, reports Sina Guangdong.

lake liwan dead fish guangzhouA reporter personally witnessed a person collecting the dead fish yesterday. However, the person wouldn’t admit to selling the dead carp, instead saying he would feed it to his dog.

Park management has complained that people who collect dead fish don’t listen to warnings and fight with security guards.

lake liwan dead fish guangzhou

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Photos: Sina Cantonese Report

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China Flags Popular Foreign Chocolate-Makers for Quality Issues

Posted: 10/7/2014 3:38 pm

Chocolate-lovers in China won’t like this news: Belgium’s Ferroro Rocher, Germany’s Ritter Sport and Taiwan’s CorNiche chocolate have all been named by China’s quality watchdog for having problems.

According to a report by Guangzhou Daily, imported chocolate from the three foreign brands are among the food products that failed a quality check conducted by the National entry & Exit Inspection and Quarantine Commission in August, the General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, the country’s quality watchdog.

The watchdog said Ferrero’s Schokobons used excessive food additives, and Ritter Sport also used additives that exceeded allowed amounts. CorNiche’s chocolate was found to have mislabeling issues, the report said.

The quality watchdog said 261 food products failed the test, most of which were bakery items, sugar and drinks. Here’s a partial list:

  • Ferrero Rocher Schokobons from Belgium, banned for having excess amounts of food additives
  • Lipo cream egg cookies from Vietnam, banned for excess amounts of aluminum
  • Pringles cheese potato chips, banned for containing excess food coloring of lemon yellow, and sunset yellow
  • Meixin Jintui Wuren Moon cakes from Hong Kong, banned for excess amounts of bacteria
  • Weiquan special soy sauce from Taiwan
  • Lorado milk powder from Germany
  • Three Ritter Sport chocolates from Germany, banned for its high moisture content
  • Corniche Xianglian milk chocolates from Taiwan

Most of the problems are related to food additives, micro bacteria infection and substandard materials.

Photos: China News

 

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Guangzhou Woman Finds Live Worms in Her KFC

Posted: 09/30/2014 3:07 pm

kfc chicken live worms guangzhouA Guangzhou woman was shocked to find her KFC lunch was crawling with tiny, white, wriggling worms, reports Caijing.

The woman, named Liu, found the worms a few hours after she had purchased the chicken and immediately contacted the media. When reporters arrived they used a fruit knife to cut open the chicken, and found more worms crawling around inside the food.

kfc chicken live worms guangzhou

KFC compensated Liu for her email and offered her a replacement at no charge, but Liu couldn’t stomach taking another bite. She said the restaurant couldn’t guarantee the food was safe, and didn’t want to share it with her son.

KFC told the reporter that it is taking the matter seriously. The American fried chicken-maker previously had problems with Husi Foods of Shanghai, which supplied expired meat to a number of fast food outlets including McDonald’s and Pizza Hut.

Here’s a video that shows the food infested with worms:

Related:

Photos: China News

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Guangzhou Cafeteria Worker Caught Taking Bites of Food, Serving It

Posted: 09/22/2014 12:00 pm

guangzhou cafeteria of the Guangzhou Communications Technical School hygiene

Things were already terrible for the Guangzhou Communications Technical School when one of its staff members with less-than-ideal hygiene standards was caught on camera, reports Sina News.

A student of the school recorded the shenanigans on the morning of September 16. A cafeteria worker is seen in the video in a white chef’s hat chewing on a bone she took from a pot of soup. Then she tossed the bone back into the soup.

guangzhou cafeteria of the Guangzhou Communications Technical School hygiene

The school has released a statement saying that these workers are all outsourced and will be replaced immediately, which is a common response in these types of situations.

guangzhou cafeteria of the Guangzhou Communications Technical School hygiene

The head of the school said the No. 3 cafeteria in Baiyun district has a rigid standard of behaviour. Students are only served simple soups like seaweed or tomato and egg, whereas menu items containing meat, like chicken soup, is reserved for teachers and cafeteria staff. As the principal said, “Therefore, the students could never have eaten this soup.”

Which brings up another question: why can teachers – and not students – have meat in their soup?

guangzhou cafeteria of the Guangzhou Communications Technical School hygiene

Here’s the video:

Photos: Yang Tse Evening Report

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More Taiwanese Gutter Oil Found In Shanghai, Xiamen, Wenzhou

Posted: 09/17/2014 10:00 am

The Taiwanese gutter oil scandal just keeps escalating as mainland cities, including Shanghai, Xiamen and Wenzhou, discover more and more food products containing tainted lard supplied by Taiwanese oil manufacturer, Chang Guann Co.

According to the Shanghai Food and Drugs Supervision Bureau, approximately 8,700 bags of food suspected of using the substandard oil were seized in Shanghai. In Xiamen, about 4.9 tons of food was suspected of containing the contaminated oil, said officials from the City’s Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau, Hong Kong newspaper Wen Wei Po reported on September 14.

Of the 4.9 tons of food seized in Xiamen, 3.2 tons consisted of pork products and 1.7 tons were made up of butter biscuits. The two food manufacturers, Wei Chuan Food (味全) and Triko Foods Co Ltd (盛香珍食品), were found to be using tainted oil from Chang Guann.

Cream cookies…found to have used the tainted oil.

Wenzhou, in eastern China, also uncovered approximately 60 kg of food allegedly containing the tainted oil, which included noodles, beef and sunflower seed oil, the China Daily reported.

Since the gutter oil scandal first exploded in Taiwan in early September (when Chang Guann was found to be mixing lard oil with gutter oil collected from food waste or slaughterhouses and selling it as cooking oil), about 250 food products involving roughly 1,200 food companies and processors were found to have used oil supplied from the company.

In Hong Kong, cakes made from the gutter oil supplied by the Taiwanese firm were sold by 7-Eleven, Starbucks, Maxim, Café Express and Arome Bakery, to name a few. A comprehensive map of the stores, shops and restaurants suspected of using the substandard oil in Hong Kong can be found here by SCMP.

Photos: Central Television 

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Tonnes of Dongguan Gutter Oil Processed & Sold By Unlicensed Companies

Posted: 09/10/2014 10:00 am

A woman is processing gutter oil.

While Taiwan is scrambling to contain the aftermath of its recent gutter oil scandal, Dongguan is facing a scandal of its own, as reported by Nandu. It alleges that the city produced nearly 4,000 tones of gutter oil a month, with approximately 3,000 tonnes ending up on dining tables, which far outnumbers the 700 tonnes exposed in Taiwan.

According to an unidentified executive from Zhongyou Zaozhi Company, the city’s only legally licensed processor of gutter oil (which turns oil from kitchen waste and slaughterhouse byproducts into fatty acid and industrial soybean oil), the company can barely collect 1,000 tonnes out of the total 4,000 tonnes produced. The remaining 3,000 tonnes is collected by more than 10 unlicensed companies, either from the city or manufacturers from nearby Shenzhen, Huizhou and Zengcheng, to process and sell to restaurants or other retailers.

Collecting the oil is not always an easy job. Workers from Zhongyou Zaozhi company explained that some gutter oil collectors had resolved to fight for the profitable, substandard oil. One worker, Xiaodu, said in May that he was threatened by illegal oil collectors from Shenzhen. His nose was injured after telling them that they did not have the right to collect the oil in Dongguan.

Gutter oil seized in Beijing in 2010.

According to the report, high profits are fueling the gutter oil market. One tonne of the oil can be sold for nearly RMB 4,000 ($652), while the cost of collection and processing is less than RMB 1,000 ($163). In total, illegal gutter oil collectors can receive RMB 3,000 in profits ($489).

We don’t know what the health risks are in consuming the oil; but, researchers are apparently working around the clock to find the answer. As reports of food safety scandals continue to develop, we see a bright future for Baidu’s newly-unveiled smart chopsticks, which are said to be able to sense if the food you eat is made with gutter oil. At this rate, we can say this may be the most anticipated new product in China.

Photos: Getty Image; 55bbs.com

 

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