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Chinese Traders Found To Be Selling Rat Meat As Mutton

220px-Rat_in_a_suburban_Vancouver_driveway220px-Barbecued_lamb_sticksJust when you thought that you could not get more shocking news from China’s environmental and food safety scandals, like thousands of dead pigs floating down a major river, you stand corrected. Chinese officials have found dozens of traders in Eastern China selling huge amounts of rat and mink flesh as mutton. This is not a couple pounds. The meat was sold for $1.6 million. Six suspects in Guizhou Province were found with 8.8 tons of “toxic chicken feet.”

Sixty-three people were arrested for “buying fox, mink and rat and other meat products that had not undergone inspection.” I am hopeful that there is no inspection for rat meat and that it is simply unlawful. The traders doused the meat in gelatin, red pigment, and nitrates, and sold it as mutton in Shanghai and adjacent Jiangsu Province.

The Chinese government is attempting to crackdown with almost 1000 people arrested for selling fake, diseased, toxic or adulterated meat.

One company in Inner Mongolia, a northeast region of China, was processing 23 tons of fake beef jerky and unprocessed frozen meat that was chemically altered and swarming with bacteria.

In one case, a person died from lamb saturated with pesticide.

It would be interesting to see how the stifling pollution and rampant food safety issues are affecting tourism to China. In my trips to China, I have been very leery of the overt lack of sanitation in many restaurants. You have to eat at the higher end restaurants to minimize risk. However, if tons of altered and contaminated meat are being sold, it is hard to see how you can be certain of the quality or even true identity of the food.

Of course, even in the United States, we have recent reports of extensive contamination and occasional “mystery meat” stories.

Source: NY Times

22 thoughts on “Chinese Traders Found To Be Selling Rat Meat As Mutton”

  2. Those dining establishments may be getting closed down but they did earn the prestigious G. Gordon Liddy’s Seal of Approval. Much harder to get than a Michelin Star. He gave two stars to one place that served Mongolian style rat because he liked that he got to cook it at the table.

  4. You Are a Guinea Pig

    “How Americans Became Exposed to Biohazards in the Greatest Uncontrolled Experiment Ever Launched”:

    A hidden epidemic is poisoning America. The toxins are in the air we breathe and the water we drink, in the walls of our homes and the furniture within them. We can’t escape it in our cars. It’s in cities and suburbs. It afflicts rich and poor, young and old. And there’s a reason why you’ve never read about it in the newspaper or seen a report on the nightly news: it has no name — and no antidote.

    The culprit behind this silent killer is lead. And vinyl. And formaldehyde. And asbestos. And Bisphenol A. And polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). And thousands more innovations brought to us by the industries that once promised “better living through chemistry,” but instead produced a toxic stew that has made every American a guinea pig and has turned the United States into one grand unnatural experiment.

    Today, we are all unwitting subjects in the largest set of drug trials ever. Without our knowledge or consent, we are testing thousands of suspected toxic chemicals and compounds, as well as new substances whose safety is largely unproven and whose effects on human beings are all but unknown.

    (Huffington Post).

  6. Nothing new here mystery meat on a stick is on the menu in many a country first and third world alike.

  7. Gary, the problem with the eggs may simply be that they are a fraud. The chemicals that they are made from are used in molecular gastronome and shouldn’t be dangerous, at least in small/reasonable quantities. They are used to make flavored spheres. We use Alginic acid as a thickener in many foods. The chemicals are available mail order (kinda’ expensive) and I checked them out after reading about flavored spheres, I thought I might give making flavored spheres a go but didn’t- too much trouble. Fake eggs are petty impressive but I’ll not be rushing out to try them.

    http://www.madeinkitchen.tv/blog/en/news/cooking-technique-spherification/

    From Food Network:
    Alginic acid:
    “A thick, jellylike substance obtained from seaweed. Alginic acid is used as a stabilizer and thickener in a wide variety of commercially processed foods such as ice creams, puddings, flavored milk drinks, pie fillings, soups and syrups.”

  9. Since these problems occur with alarming frequency in their own country, can you imagine what sort of dangerous “tweaking” is being done to products shipped from there to our shores? Perhaps with abandon, since workers there understandably have no love for us, due to the abysmal conditions they toil under with the obvious blessing of American profiteers.
    The rights of workers the world over should be respectfully honored. Mistreatment deservedly breeds contempt.

  10. After reading a recent report in WaPo about the drenching of chicken carcasses with chemicals and then another about high rates of bacteria in turkey, I stood looking at the meat counter for about ten minutes today and came home meatless. I have to entirely re-think how to buy meat and where. Food safety is only going to become a larger issue under the meat-axe (pun intended) of sequestration.

  11. If, after all these reports, you are still eating Chinese-manufactured food, or, worse, feeding it to your pets, I really don’t know what to say to you.

  12. RTC – NO.
    Don’t worry folks, we are working our way down to this level as fast as Congress can make it happen. We don’t need no stinkin’ inspections!

    The CHinese people are painfully aware of their situation. Right now powered infant formula from the US sells at a huge premium in China because they know it has been inspected and is safe. The problem is that the government is the industrialists there so nothing can be done. Here in the US we are seeing the industrialist be the government so we can enjoy the same freedom from decent oversight some day soon

  14. “Europe Bans Bee-Harming Pesticides; US Keeps Spraying”

    In the US, neonic-treated crops cover a land mass equivalent to as much as twice the size of the California.</blockquote: (Mother Jones).

    Rat meat may be all that there is in the future.

    Maybe they are on to something and that is how they will overtake the U.S.eh? as the number one economy?

  15. This is why I won’t sell in my store any food products that come from China. More consumers here should avoid buying such as well.

  16. One wonders how they are going to overtake the U.S. economy as the number one economy in the Green Bucky world records:

    IN 2010 CHINA shot past Japan to become the world’s second-largest economy (based on current market prices). But when might it supplant America at number one? The answer depends on how the exchange rates are calculated. The IMF’s forecasts and the long-run tables of GDP compiled by the late Angus Maddison, an economic historian, are based on purchasing-power parity (PPP), which makes allowances for the lower prices of non-traded services in poorer countries. On that basis, the size of China’s economy is already close to America’s and is likely to overtake it by 2016.

    (The Economist). Oh, it is a sad day when Rat Burgers beat out McNuggets.

  17. Really though, what does anyone have against Rat?
    As Fat Freddy said, “Hey these ceiling rabbits are really quite good!”

  18. Delicious I’m sure…. And beef is sold in Europe riddled with Horse meat…. You don’t say….

  20. What of that manmade chicken eggs thing I saw a couple years back?
    Could never quite wrap my mind around that one.

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