China: Land of mystery meat

last updated 8 January 2015

Wang Zhenghua

China Daily

It’s hard to be a Chinese housewife these days, said Wang Zhenghua. What are you supposed to feed your family when you can’t trust the labels on meat? Last week, Shanghai food safety officials announced that thousands of pounds of meat sold as lamb in the city’s markets was actually fox, mink, or even rat laced with dyes and chemicals. Dozens were arrested for the scam, which has apparently been going on for years, and nobody knows how many people ended up eating rat. Scratch lamb from the shopping list. What’s left? Many families across China had already “removed poultry from their menu” because of the latest strain of bird flu virus, while nobody has much of a stomach for pork since more than 16,000 pig carcasses were found floating in Shanghai’s main river a few months ago. And eating out isn’t the answer either. Just this week, three people were arrested for processing pigs that had died of infectious diseases and selling about 40 tons of the tainted pork to restaurants. Home cooks can do their own meat inspections by observing the color: Fake lamb gets suspiciously dark after being cooked “and produces a foamy scum.” Try to “avoid buying from street sellers.” Unfortunately, even if tonight’s dinner seems safe, “you don’t know what meat will be uncovered next as a public health hazard.”