Police stop the sale of 46-year-old chicken feet in China
Chinese police have reportedly seized 20 tonnes of out-of-date meat from a Vietnamese smuggling gang including chicken feet that were 46 years past their sell-by-date.
During a raid conducted in May but only reported this week, police in the southwestern province of Guangxi said they smashed an underground network that had been swamping the Chinese food market with substandard chicken feet, tripe and throat.
Among their discoveries were chicken feet that date back to 1967. Li Jianmin, a local security chief, said that after smuggling the decades-old feet into China the expired meat was treated with chemicals, including hydrogen peroxide, "to kill bacteria, prolong the expiry date" and make the feet "look white and big".
The smugglers were able to turn a profit of around £1750 per tonne by transforming 1kg of out-of-date chicken into 1.5kg of apparently fresh chicken.
During a raid conducted in May but only reported this week, police in the southwestern province of Guangxi said they smashed an underground network that had been swamping the Chinese food market with substandard chicken feet, tripe and throat.
Among their discoveries were chicken feet that date back to 1967. Li Jianmin, a local security chief, said that after smuggling the decades-old feet into China the expired meat was treated with chemicals, including hydrogen peroxide, "to kill bacteria, prolong the expiry date" and make the feet "look white and big".
The smugglers were able to turn a profit of around £1750 per tonne by transforming 1kg of out-of-date chicken into 1.5kg of apparently fresh chicken.
