When it comes to lying, cheating, deceiving and scamming people about their food, no country is more accomplished than China, home of the melamine infant formula scandal and foods contaminated with high levels of heavy metals.Now a new scandal adds one more milestone to the list: Chinese authorities say they broke up a 900-person criminal ring that harvested meat from rats and other animals to be modified and sold as lamb meat. This "rat meat" appeared in markets in Jiangsu province and Shanghai.
Unwitting consumers routinely purchased the meat, not knowing they were eating "rat steaks" at home.
Beyond the obvious gross factor of the discovery, the rat meat used in the scam was obviously never safety tested or inspected. It may have been, like many other foods in China, heavily contaminated with heavy metals and toxic chemicals. Rats, after all, don't live the cleanest lifestyles.
"Despite years of food scandals -- from milk contaminated with an industrial chemical to the use of industrial dyes in eggs -- China has been unable to clean up its food supply chain," reports USA Today.
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