'Gutter Oil' scandal exposed
Chinese police have raided recycled food oil operations across the country in an effort to stop the sale of dangerously contaminated oil.
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'Gutter Oil' Image: eChinacities.com |
Illegal processing plants across China have been shut down after they were discovered reselling carcinogenic cooking oil dredged up from sewers and drains.
Police have arrested 32 people across 14 provinces in the largest crackdown on processed oil to date and have seized hundreds of tons of 'gutter oil', unscrupulously harvested from drains behind restaurants.
Chefs' use of recycled oil has long been an open secret in the restaurant industry, but the latest raids revealed the extent of the market place for the unsafe gutter oil, which China's College of Food Science professor Wang Chengming estimates at around two million tons per year.
A Zhejiang company had been running under the guise of a biodiesel producer whilst secretly manufacturing gutter oil collected from traders. The company's general manager, Liu Liguo, admitted they purchased the oil at around 5,000 yuan a ton and resold it for up to 8,000 yuan to wholesalers. Police in Harbin city also uncovered a plant with a 700 ton capacity that collected oil illegally from 70 restaurants.
In Beijing, a journalist who had been reporting on the gutter oil scandal was murdered, in an incident that the police claim could be related, although this has since been discounted. Li Xiang, a reporter for Luoyang Television Station in Henan, had reported numerous cases of manufacturers using reconstituted oil. Two people were arrested in connection with the murder.
