Meats seized after scam

More than 70 meat products from Chengbei Huilongguan Market were confiscated and one butcher was shut down yesterday.

The Changping branch of the Beijing administration for industry and commerce made the statement in a press release yesterday.

The crackdown followed a Beijing Times news report yesterday that pork and duck slices, normally half the price of mutton, were being relabeled as mutton slices. The meat was reportedly then sold to hotpot restaurants by the market in Changping district.

The press release said that the Changping branch listened to consumer complaints at the market yesterday. It suggested customers to pay attention to the sanitary conditions in shops and the smell of meat on offer. All problems should be reported immediately.

Mutton slices in Chengbei Market are as cheap as 16 yuan per kg, according to the Beijing Times report.

But the website of Xinfadi Market, the biggest outside market in Beijing, said its wholesale price for mutton slice is 32 yuan per kg.

"Their cheapest mutton slice is not actually mutton," the newspaper quoted a woman wholesaler from the market as saying yesterday.

"But these meats are quite popular among hotpot shops in Beijing. If you want to make money from your business, you have to buy these mutton slices. Nobody can tell the difference when it's in a hotpot," she said.

The owner of shop No B46 said its 15 yuan per kg mutton slices are made from pork mixed with lard, or duck mixed with duck fat, and 16 yuan slices are made from pork and mutton fat, an undercover reporter from Beijing Times wrote.

The owner said real mutton slices are sold at 30 yuan per kg in markets for wholesalers and 36 yuan per kg for retailers, but most were still injected with water.

"You can find a lot of ice in them. Some are mutton but they often also have a lot of mutton fat mixed in," he told the Beijing Times.

In addition to selling fake mutton slices, shop owners in the market also made phony packaging like "Yangfang high quality lamb slices" from "the Beijing Shunguang Food Ltd," or "Inner Mongolia quality mutton slices" from "the Siwangziqikai Meat Company".

"They are all fake," the owner said. "Different buyers want different labels. Just call us and we will provide you with whatever you need."