Beijing: More than 40 years old smuggled frozen meat worth half a billion dollars some has been seized in China. As per the reports, the captured meat were absolutely in decayed condition. The state-run China Daily newspaper said that more than 100,000 tonnes of chicken wings, beef and pork worth up to three billion yuan ($483 million) were seized in the nationwide search operations. An official from Hunan province, from where 800 tonnes were seized said that there was severe foul smell from the room, when he opened the door. Two gangs from the central province were among the 14 who conducted operations across the country earlier this month. A report on the official Hunan propaganda website said that the meat seized locally was come from the “border area” with Vietnam. According to the information, it was difficult to control the flow of meat from that border section. But the China Daily did not specify the frozen meat’s origin while the seizures were not mentioned on the website of China’s General Administration of Customs. Officials from Guangxi, a southern region bordering Vietnam, found that some of the meat seized was more than 40 years old. That would mean, it would have packed and stored when the country was under the rule of Communist China’s founding father Mao Zedong, who died in 1976. The China Daily said that smugglers would have bought cheap meat from abroad, shipped it to
Hong Kong and then on to Vietnam before bringing it to the mainland. Yang Bo, deputy director of the anti-smuggling bureau in the Hunanese capital Changsha, said that they would have often transported the goods in ordinary vehicles, in place of refrigerated ones, to save costs. According to him, the meat had to remain unfrozen for several hours before reaching customers. Nowadays poor food safety is a major concern in China, where standards are weak and scandals involving damaged products are common. In the year 2008, China was surprised by one of its biggest-ever food safety scandals when the industrial chemical base was found to have been illegally added to dairy products. In that treacherous food scandal six babies were died while 300,000 people were fallen ill. Video on decades old meat seized in China
