Rat meat sold as lamb in Shanghai, police say
If you have ordered lamb or mutton for hotpot in Shanghai over the last four years, you might have been served rat, fox or mink, the Ministry of Public Security said on Thursday.
"After adding gelatine, carmine, nitrate and other substances, he sold the meat as fake lamb rolls [for hot pot] at farmers' markets in Jiangsu and Shanghai."
Wei's organisation was raided in Jiangsu and Shanghai in February, which led to the arrest of 63 suspects and the seizure of 10 tons of meat and additives.
Police estimates that Wei's sales over the last four years have reached a value of 10 million yuan (HK$12.6 million).
In March, police in Baotou, a city in the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region, stopped a company that since 2010 has been producing beef jerky from duck meat and selling it in 15 Chinese provinces. Almost 15 tons of the fake jerky were confiscated.
These are two of 10 stomachs-wrenching cases the ministry listed as exemplary of a crackdown on food product fraud - meat of diseased animals, steroid-manipulated meat and sewer oil - that started two weeks before Chinese New Year, on January 25.
The campaign comes amid a growing shortage in agricultural products and a general sense of anxiety over food security.