| Abstract: |
Restaurants in a Chinese city known as the “hometown of donkey burgers” might not have been dishing up what it advertised, as a recent investigative report found that cheaper meat from mules, horses, and pigs was frequently being used instead. Most meat-processing businesses in Hejian, a city in northern China’s Hebei province, were operating out of private residences without a license, processing overnight, and packaging in unhygienic environments in the early morning to avoid drawing the attention of authorities. Besides being consumed locally, the meat — labeled as donkey meat — was also sold all over China, from Beijing to Liaoning in the northeast and Yunnan in the southeast, The Beijing News reported Monday.“Have a taste of this meat: It’s not so different from real donkey meat,” one owner of a meat processing business told undercover reporters from The Beijing News when they posed as potential buyers. The owner added that he could sell at least 4,500 kilos of counterfeit donkey meat per month. |
