– Forget Horse Meat or Fake Tuna, Rat Meat is Being Sold as Lamb in China (Liberty Blitzkrieg, May3, 2013):
It seems as if those engaged in food fraud just want to keep escalating their game. First we were horrified by horse meat and fake tuna, then dog meat, but now it’s gotten worse. Much worse. In China, the food fraudsters have take things to an entirely new level by mixing rat, fox and mink meat with gelatin additives and passing it off as lamb. You may want to avoid that food cart next time you’re in Shanghai.
From The Washington Post:
BEIJING — Chinese police have broken up a criminal ring accused of taking meat from rats and foxes and selling it as lamb in the country’s latest food safety scandal.
The Ministry of Public Security released results of a three-month crackdown on food safety violators, saying in a statement that authorities investigated more than 380 cases and arrested 904 suspects.Among those arrested were 63 people who allegedly ran an operation in Shanghai and the coastal city of Wuxi that bought fox, mink, rat and other meat that had not been tested for quality and safety, processed it with additives like gelatin and passed it off as lamb.
The announcement came as China’s top court on Friday issued guidelines calling for harsher punishment for making and selling unsafe food products in the latest response to tainted food scandals that have angered the public.
The supreme court said 2,088 people have been prosecuted in 2010-2012 in 1,533 food safety cases. It said the number of such cases has grown exponentially in the past several years. For example, Chinese courts prosecuted 861 cases of poisonous food in 2012, compared to 80 cases in 2010.
“We cannot tolerate it any longer. We must punish the criminals severely, or we cannot answer to our people,” Pei said.
Punish criminals? I don’t undertand. In the U.S. we’d probably promote them to top positions at the FDA.
Full article here.
In Liberty,
Mike
Disgusting, like much of China. I used to work for an international corporation that had suppliers and Mfg facilities in China. I was an in-house contract recruiter for engineers. Many of my hiring managers had to spend at least a week a month in China, and they hated it. Once you get out of the big cities, into the provinces where the workers live, sleep, eat and work in miserable conditions, the filth is beyond belief. Compared to us, they live like animals, the Chinese government has no respect for human life as we were taught in western civilization. A well educated supply engineer would earn about $80-95K a year here in CA, while a Chinese one would earn $3-5K a year. NO wonder all the offshoring of good jobs to enrich the corporations is in every trade agreement. It has to be stopped, or we will end up like them.
The food they eat is nothing like we see if we go to a Chinese restaurant in America…….it is awful. Hygiene is poor. Food safety is as corrupt as our banking system.
When the SARS epidemic hit in China, the final official number was 600-800 dead. My managers told me a different story, because they were there. Thousands died, entire villages were wiped out. And, much of the diseases of the world from the Black Plague to the present are bred in dirty, unclean situations.
The opening of China was the worst thing Richard Nixon ever did, and I studied him for years. He did a lot of rotten things, but taking us off the gold standard and opening China are the top two.
I am not surprised they eat rats, mice or anything. The Chinese have no respect for human life and they are horribly overpopulated.
The Romans ate door mice, they were considered a delicacy. The difference was the fact they didn’t pretend otherwise. Termites are considered a high protean delicacy in Kenya, the best for pregnant women and growing children. Nations all have food customs, but passing off crap as lamb is really low rent.
Does anyone else recall what is happening in this country with our food safety lately? What about the pink slime they put in ground meat? People need to get proactive with government very quickly, or we will be suffering similar outrages here. Remember all the pets that died from rotten pet food? Wheat gluten isn’t allowed in my cat’s diet. I see that on any label, and wouldn’t feed it to anyone. Fortunately, we have labeling, but it is getting corrupted by greedy politicians serving the greedier needs of their corporate contributors.
I got e-coli in 2006 from eating raw spinach from a bag of pre-washed vegetables. I was sick for a month, it was awful. Everything I eat now from a crop, vegetables, fruit, berries, etc, I soak in filtered water for at least 20 minutes first. Fortunately, we still have things like abundant water supplies making such safeguards easy.
Thanks for the good information. As usual, the corporate media avoids stories like this, they are too close to the truth to please their corporate owners. Keep up the good work.
Apparently, it tastes like chicken.