"It stinks, a whole carriage, I almost threw up when I opened the door." Zhang Tao (a pseudonym), a policeman from Changsha Customs Anti-smuggling Bureau, said.
It is understood that 20 people were arrested in these two cases, including Hunan 17 people, Guangxi 2 people and Guangdong 1 person.
On the same day, three cold storages were found in Changsha * * * for storing these smuggled frozen products, with a total area of about 3,000 square meters. A large number of frozen products with foreign languages written on their packages are piled up in the cold storage. The frozen products smuggled by Li are stored in two of them and distributed to Hunan Province 14 cities and counties and all over the country through the facade of Changsha Hongxing Cold Storage.
Red Star Cold Storage covers an area of 180 mu, which is the largest wholesale market of frozen products in Hunan and the main distribution center of frozen products in Hunan Province. According to the conservative statistics of Changsha Customs, about 1/3 of the annual throughput of 800,000 tons of frozen products in Hongxing Cold Storage is frozen products from abroad with unknown sources.
The invention of freezing technology was originally to ensure the freshness of food. However, the reporter learned that the production date on some smuggled frozen meat packages shows that the "meat age" is as long as thirty or forty years. In June, during the special campaign of the Customs to crack down on smuggling frozen meat, a group of post-80s frozen meat older than him was investigated and dealt with by anti-smuggling personnel at a port in Guangxi.
Experts told reporters that the quality of frozen meat for many years will be worse than that of fresh meat, but as long as there is no thawing phenomenon during the freezing process, it is difficult to distinguish from the appearance and taste. However, the transportation conditions of smuggled meat are bad, and it is easy to breed all kinds of bacteria in the process of continuous thawing, and even start to rot and then freeze, and its hygiene and safety and food quality are unimaginable.
These meats of unknown origin enter food stalls, restaurants and even regular supermarkets through wholesale markets. With the rise of fresh e-commerce, some online platforms have also become their potential sales channels. After being pickled in soy sauce and seasoned with pepper, some of these meats are made into bagged cooked food, while others have evolved into "delicious food" on the table, which is difficult for consumers to distinguish.
The "chicken feet with pickled peppers" that many people like to eat is the "hardest hit" for smuggling frozen products. Insiders told reporters that some "delicious" chicken feet even have decades of history and may come from abroad. Criminals soak them with bleach such as hydrogen peroxide to make them look chubby, white and tender, and "look good".
According to the survey, Li and his family smuggled at least hundreds of tons of pig's feet and chicken's feet to Hunan in the past year, and then distributed them to all parts of the country through the facade of the Red Star cold storage. According to the latest inspection and quarantine access list of meat products of AQSIQ, China is only allowed to import beef from Australia, New Zealand, Uruguay, Argentina, Canada, Costa Rica, Chile and Hungary. Smuggled beef not imported from these countries generally sells for a catty in 20 yuan, while the fresh beef market averages a catty in 40 yuan.
From the case of Hunan, profiteering prompted unscrupulous businessmen to take risks, and finally formed a frozen goods smuggling chain of overseas delivery, Hong Kong container transportation, Vietnam transit, Sino-Vietnamese border "ant moving" smuggling and Changsha receiving goods.
According to relevant personnel, the most common smuggling route is: smugglers buy goods from overseas at low prices, transport them to Hong Kong in containers, and then transport them to Haiphong, Vietnam, dismantle them at Mang Street on the Sino-Vietnamese border, and hire border people to "move ants" to transport frozen products to China. Dozens of border residents can move a 35-ton container of frozen goods in an hour or two.
Due to the high transportation cost of refrigerated trucks, smugglers transport frozen products from Nanning to Changsha by ordinary cars. 12 hours later, these goods have just thawed, and some even began to rot and stink. The frozen products that arrived in Changsha were moved into the cold storage and cooled again, and then sent to Hunan, Guangdong, Sichuan, Chongqing and other places.
It is understood that many shops in the Red Star cold storage mix domestic meat with imported meat for sale, and it is often seen that frozen boxes with various foreign language signs are transported to various places by trucks. "If you want to buy meat with quarantine certificate, you should buy domestic meat, and if you want to buy cheap meat, you should buy imported meat." A businessman is blunt.
What is even more shocking is that the chain of smuggling frozen meat involves many places. In the special operation in June, after preliminary investigation, it was found that since June 20 15, 2 1 smuggling gangs from Panyu, Guangdong Province, Huang, Wenmou and Dalian, Liaoning Province have accepted the import orders of frozen products from shippers in Beijing, Tianjin, Chongqing, Henan and Guangdong, and the smuggled frozen products from abroad have continuously flowed into the domestic market.
Not long ago, Huanggang Customs and Luohu Customs conducted special investigations on frozen products and seafood in the entry-exit hall of Futian Port, and even found that water passengers smuggled frozen products and seafood into the country by means of suitcases and backpacks. Cui, who has been engaged in beef trade for a long time, told the Beijing News that this kind of aged frozen meat is mostly foreign strategic reserve materials, mainly in the United States. In the replacement of storage materials, some aged beef began to circulate to the market. "After a long period of frozen storage, the surface area of beef has begun to oxidize and turn black, so it will not be sold directly to consumers as frozen meat. However, after cooking methods such as marinating and frying in restaurants, the appearance of beef can be masked, and the taste is almost the same as that of normal beef, which is difficult for ordinary consumers to distinguish.
It is understood that due to the need of strategic reserves and stable prices, countries will take the initiative to freeze and store a large amount of meat. According to the "Measures for the Management of Central Reserve Meat" promulgated by China in 2007, frozen pork is stored for 3 rounds every year in principle, and each round is stored for about 4 months; Frozen beef and mutton are not rotated in principle, and stored for about 8 months in each round.
"Frozen products such as beef and mutton in China generally have a shelf life of 8 months to 12 months, and cannot be thawed after expiration. Other countries in the world have a longer preservation time, generally up to 2 years. " China Meat Association deputy secretary-general executives told the Beijing News reporter that although the country has detailed provisions on the shelf life of frozen meat, the management level of cold storage is also uneven, and not all standards are strictly enforced.
In fact, the figure of strategic reserve meat for aging has also appeared frequently in the world. 20 10 the economic security bureau of the Russian Ministry of internal affairs cracked a smuggling case of meat products in belgorod. During the Cold War, "war meat" stored and frozen for more than 30 years was smuggled to Russia from the United States, Brazil, Belgium and Canada through Ukraine. Criminal gangs have been engaged in this activity for several years. After the publication of zombie meat, it also caused many questions. Some consumers on the Internet said that the cost of storage and freezing for more than 40 years even exceeded the value of frozen meat itself, and there was no need to make great efforts to smuggle it to China.
People from the Entry-Exit Inspection and Quarantine Bureau told the Beijing News that the storage cost of this strategic reserve meat is very low, which is different from the for-profit cold storage, which needs to consider storage and electricity charges. The converted freezing cost of meat stored as combat readiness materials is about per ton 17 yuan.
It is also the low storage cost and price that gave birth to the market upsurge of smuggling expired and aged meat. The source said it was suspected to be beef below 30-40 yuan. In the international market of expired meat, China, where the sales of meat products have increased greatly, bears the brunt. In fact, the smuggling case of "zombie meat" cracked by Changsha Customs is not the first time. 20 14 10, Changsha industrial and commercial bureau inspected Hunan hongxing frozen food co., ltd, and seized 25.3 tons of animal products such as pork bellies, chicken feet and pig feet, most of which exceeded the shelf life of 24 months. Some imported frozen meat has no customs clearance certificate and is suspected of smuggling.
Since June 24th, the Beijing News reporter has visited many vegetable markets and meat wholesale markets in Beijing Dongcheng and Fengtai, and found that the Beijing market generally supplies cold meat, but rarely sells frozen products. Many merchants said that the meat sold was just slaughtered and there was no frozen meat. Therefore, it is difficult to see aged frozen meat in the retail market.
So, where is the "zombie meat"? The Beijing News reporter learned that smuggled meat has formed a complete industrial chain of reprocessing and distribution, with the focus shifted to second-and third-tier cities.
"After entering the customs from Hong Kong, smuggled meat is mainly sold to Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan and other provinces and cities, and the target customers are small restaurants." An insider close to the distribution channel told reporters that the import price of this expired frozen meat is very cheap and there is no inspection report. In order to avoid quarantine supervision, distribution will also avoid first-tier cities such as Beijing and Shanghai, and focus on supplying restaurants in second-and third-tier cities. "This kind of meat is stored for too long and will be watered to keep its appearance shiny. Touching by hand, the surface has a sticky feeling. "
In this smuggling and sales network, a rigorous model of stagnation team and interlocking has been formed. The source said that smuggled meat was transported from abroad to ports such as Hong Kong, and then cleared into distribution cities such as Guangzhou. After being divided and then frozen, it is sold to various channels throughout the country. At the same time, factories and freezers are often built in remote suburbs. During the transportation process, several teams take different routes, and each location and link is met by peers and sold directly to hotels and restaurants.
Lin, the head of another Hong Kong trading company engaged in Uruguayan beef import, also told the Beijing News reporter that "zombie meat" stored for 30 or 40 years is actually rare in the industry, and it will only flow out in some cold storage statistics abroad, and frozen meat that exceeds the shelf life 1 ~ 2 years is in the greatest demand in the market. According to him, the import and export meat trade cycle is long and the transaction volume is huge. Once the backlog expires, a large number of dealers will come to the door and "propose to buy it all at a price of 40% ~ 50% or even lower." A number of food safety testing institutions and experts told the Beijing News reporter that by using technical means, it is generally possible to determine whether meat has expired by detecting sensory and microbial indicators, but it is difficult to directly determine the actual storage life of aged frozen meat.
The existing inspection standards for meat products in China are GB2707-2005 Hygienic Standard for Fresh (Frozen) Livestock Meat and GB/T 1723-2008 Hygienic Standard for Fresh Frozen Cut Beef. Among them, the detection of meat products focuses on sensory indicators such as color, viscosity and smell, technical inspection indicators such as thawing water loss rate and volatile base nitrogen content of frozen poultry meat, and microbial indicators such as total number of colonies, coliforms and salmonella.
Nan Qingxian, a professor at China Agricultural University and chairman of the Agricultural Products Storage and Processing Branch of China Agricultural Society, said that during long-term storage, the surface of aged frozen meat will turn yellow, brown or even oxidized black, and the nutrition in its fleshy cells has already lost, and the fiber quality has also changed. However, "it is difficult to ensure the storage environment in import smuggling. Once the car reaches the thawing condition above 0℃, frozen meat will quickly breed bacteria and lead to corruption. At this time, even if it is frozen again, there are still a lot of bacteria harmful to the human body in the meat. "
Jiangxi US Food and Drug Administration, Guangdong, Heilongjiang, Anhui, Chongqing and other provinces and cities have carried out special rectification of "zombie meat". Wholesale markets, large-scale frozen food warehouses and catering enterprises focus on checking whether the source of frozen meat is legal and whether it exceeds the shelf life.