Shanghai (AsiaNews / Agencies) - If the last four years you sat at a table in Shanghai to enjoy a delicious lamb or mutton stew, you were probably served rat, fox or mink meat. This is according to statement issued by the Ministry of Public Security after the arrest of a suspect, known as Wei, the head of a sprawling organization that peddles fake meat.
This past February,
the police organized a raid in Jiangsu and Shanghai, which led to the arrest of
63 people and the seizure of 10 tons of meat and additives. According
to preliminary investigations, in these four years, Wei built a racket to the
value of 10 million Yuan (1.2 million euro).
"Since
2009 - reads the official Ministry statement - the suspect bought foxes, mink,
rats and other animal products unidentified in Shandong. After adding gelatin,
carmine, nitrate and other additives, he sold the meat to markets in
Jiangsu and Shanghai, passing it off as rolls of lamb to use in the stew".
In March, police
in Baotou, a city of the autonomous region of Inner Mongolia, closed a company
that since 2010 has produced beef counterfeited for 15 Chinese provinces. The
authorities have withdrawn at least 15 tons of fake beef.
The
discovery of these two cases has led, over the past three months, to the
seizure of approximately 20 thousand tons of counterfeit meat and the arrest of
3,576 suspects, all over China.
Several times in recent years the Asian giant has been at the center of scandals linked to food served on Chinese tables. In 2008 six infants died and about 300 thousand children became ill after consuming milk powder contaminated with melamine, used to raise the level of nitrogen present in the milk, to falsify protein intake.