A hotpot restaurant that had people queuing up to eat and whose business was growing was reported on the spot for secretly fishing for gutter oil. In September last year, the gutter oil case at Wenzhou's "Dalongyi" hotpot restaurant caused a stir. Since then, a large number of hot pot restaurants in Wenzhou, Taizhou, Shaoxing, Huzhou and other places have been investigated and punished. These restaurants without exception used gutter oil.

How did gutter oil come to the table step by step? Why did they take the risk?

Yesterday morning, four people including the owner and dishwasher of Wenzhou's "Dalongyi" hot pot restaurant were tried in Lucheng Court on suspicion of producing and selling toxic and harmful food. The inside story about gutter oil was revealed by a Once revealed.

A hotpot restaurant that is doing very well actually uses gutter oil

Yu, a Shanghainese, is the legal person of Wenzhou’s “Dalongyi” hotpot restaurant and holds 70% of the shares. In May 2015, he and his wife came to Wenzhou to open a hotpot restaurant, and found Ling, a fellow chef who had been a chef, to join them and gave them 10 shares.

In September 2015, the Dalongyi hotpot restaurant Da Nanmen opened. Business was booming, and diners often had to queue for hours to get a bite. In April last year, they opened another Wenzhou Xincheng store.

On the evening of September 27 last year, Shi, an employee of Wenzhou Zhongke Company in charge of waste oil recycling, went to Dalongyi to collect oil. He saw someone fishing for gutter oil privately. The other party said that it was the owner of the hot pot restaurant who ordered it. of. Shi immediately called the police.

After the incident, Yu and Ling, as well as employees Tang and Mao, were arrested.

Tang from Sichuan was contracted to wash dishes at the "Dalongyi" hot pot restaurant; Mao, a fellow countryman of Tang, came to Wenzhou to join Tang. He originally applied for a job as a dishwasher, with a monthly salary of 4,500 yuan. As a result, I was assigned to fish for waste oil.

New oil and gutter oil were mixed together for customers to eat

Yesterday’s court hearing restored the refining process of gutter oil in detail.

Mao said that every time he took a plastic bucket and scooped out the oil from the discarded hot pot base, and discarded the chili and other ingredients. One barrel can hold about 100 kilograms. After fishing it out, he called Tang, who asked someone to transport it away on a battery car.

The gutter oil was taken to Tang’s rental house, and the tools for refining included stainless steel barrels, filters, salt water, gas stoves, packaging bags, etc.

Tang Mou said that he first boiled water in the rental house, mixed the boiled water and gutter oil at a ratio of 1:1, then added salt and heated it, and in this way cleaned and filtered impurities.

After three times of cleaning and filtration, the water in the mixture is dried, refined into "old oil", and put into plastic bags. Including gas fees, packaging fees, etc., the cost of each pack (2.5 kilograms) of "old oil" is about 6.5 yuan, and the price he paid to the boss Yu was 8 yuan.

The "old oil" is put into a cardboard box, taken to the Xincheng store, and placed in the freezer for later use. According to Yu's instructions, the employees mixed one pack of new oil (2 kilograms) with one pack of gutter oil (2.5 kilograms) to make a pot base for customers to eat.

According to Tang’s account, from August 25 to September 27 last year, he processed 239 packages of “old oil” for hot pot restaurants, totaling less than 600 kilograms.

How profitable is it to use gutter oil?

In court, Yu said that the use of gutter oil in the hot pot industry was an "unspoken rule". Tang had proposed to him many times that he would refine old oil and let him refine the used oil. I tried to buy it back at a lower price, but he refused. Later, the Xincheng store opened, but the business was not very good. He thought it was because of the taste, so he agreed to Tang. He said this was done just to enhance the taste of hot pot.

Is this really the case?

According to the survey, the monthly turnover of "Dalongyi" hotpot Danan store is about 1.5 million yuan, and the Xincheng store also has nearly 1 million yuan.

As for the pot base alone, the monthly income of Da Nanmen store is more than 600,000 yuan, and that of Xincheng store is more than 200,000 yuan.

Ling used to be a chef. According to his explanation, Sichuan hot pot is divided into mandarin duck pot and spicy pot. The mandarin duck pot uses 2 kilograms of oil, and the spicy pot uses 2.5 kilograms of oil.

Take spicy hotpot as an example. The new oil provided by the "Dalongyi" headquarters is 20 yuan per catty, and one pot costs 50 yuan.

If all gutter oil is used, the cost of one pot is only 8 yuan, which saves 42 yuan. Even if you only use half of the gutter oil, you can save about 26 yuan per pot.

He said "I'm sorry" three times to consumers

Yesterday's court hearing, the prosecution and the defense debated the social harm of using "old oil" in hot pot restaurants. A defender pointed out that there has not been a single consumer complaint at Wenzhou Dalongyi Hot Pot Restaurant, and no one has become sick as a result.

The public prosecutor stated that the so-called "old oil" was gutter oil. According to its investigation, it is a misunderstanding that adding "old oil" to Sichuan hot pot can increase the taste. Moreover, as early as 2011, the relevant industry associations in Sichuan have passed self-discipline regulations prohibiting the use of "old oil". Consumers must establish the concept of "health is greater than taste".

In the final statement stage, Yu said "I'm sorry" three times in a row to apologize to consumers.

The Lucheng Court will pronounce the verdict at a later date.

Many hot pot restaurants in the province were investigated and punished for using gutter oil

After the Dalongyi hot pot restaurant incident, Wenzhou police, market supervision bureau and other departments launched special rectification of the hot pot industry . During this period, the Ruian store of Yuwei Xiaoyu Hotpot was also investigated and punished. This hotpot brand appeared in "A Bite of China 2".

As of March 15 this year, the Wenzhou Procuratorate has prosecuted at least 10 "gutter oil" cases, and 30 suspects involved have been charged with producing and selling toxic and harmful food.

In February this year, Taizhou also launched a special operation to crack down on "gutter oil". 16 hot pot restaurants were investigated for suspected illegal use of gutter oil, and the police took criminal coercive measures against 55 suspects in accordance with the law.

In March this year, Huzhou notified eight hot pot and other restaurants that used gutter oil, and three Internet celebrity hot pot restaurant owners in Zhuji were arrested for the same reason.