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Chinese authorities have launched an investigation into shipments of cooking oil after local media reported that fuel tankers were being used to transport edible oil without being purified, sparking the country’s latest food safety scandal.
An undercover video by the state-backed Beijing News last week showed numerous tanker trucks carrying cooking oil, with one driver calling it an “open secret” in the industry that truck drivers did not clean their tanks when switching between hauling toxic and edible liquids.
“I’m carrying sugar, honey, molasses, cooking oil, motor oils,” another driver said in the video. “I carry everything.” A third truck driver said he usually did not pay Rmb 400-500 (US$55-69) to wash his truck’s tank before changing loads.
China’s State Council, the Cabinet, this week announced a joint multi-agency investigation led by the Food Safety Commission to “thoroughly investigate issues related to the transportation of cooking oil by tanker” and “severely punish” companies and individuals found to be violating the law. according to state media.
The report, which implicated China’s state-owned food company Sinograin, sparked public outrage as social media users and other local media exposed past allegations of contaminated tankers. Using open-source data, one individual tracked down a suspicious tanker supplying the facilities of Yihai Kerry Arawana, the country’s leading cooking oil company.
Sinograin said in a statement that it had launched a “thorough special inspection” of all its operations and would blacklist any transport companies found to be in breach of regulations. Yihai Kerry said it has a comprehensive food safety system in place and an internal investigation found that all tankers supplying its facilities “passed rigorous verification and inspection procedures”.
The revelation of unsanitary transport practices echoes a previous food safety scandal in 2011, when companies and individuals were found to have been collecting cooking oil from street gutters for recycling and resale.
China has long suffered from food and drug safety scandals, and regulators have turned a blind eye to companies’ cost-cutting efforts. In 2007, China executed its former top food and drug regulator for accepting bribes to approve drugs that were later found to have quality problems that led to the deaths of at least five people.
In 2008, powdered milk contaminated with the poisonous chemical melamine caused more than 300,000 infants to become ill and at least six to die.
In 2014, a supplier for McDonald’s and KFC was found to be supplying expired meat to stores in Shanghai, while workers at a Beijing Subway franchise had altered food expiration dates.
In 2018, a vaccine maker was fined more than $1.3 billion for distributing hundreds of thousands of defective doses to children.
Repeated safety lapses have caused widespread distrust of domestic powdered milk and other foods and medicines, leading many Chinese consumers to favor more expensive imported products, despite President Xi Jinping’s focus on the importance of food security for the country.
Sales of imported cooking oil jumped on Chinese e-commerce platforms this week, while sales of Sinograin brands were removed.
“In a few days, we sold what we would normally sell in a month,” one trader of imported cooking oil told Chinese media.