Outrage in China over further experiences of carrying cooking oil by gas tankers

They arrive just days before Chinese leader Xi Jinping convenes a high-level meeting of the Communist Party, where his “universal prosperity” plan will be a priority for the government and senior officials are expected to present a reform package. do. Self-assurance in a slow economic system.

The government has worked hard to monitor the fallout from the revelations, with China’s Cabinet today ordering an analysis of multiple volumes, and local investigations launched in Hebei province and the city of Tianjin, as cases across the country Similar reports are coming out.

The outrage began when state-run Beijing News recently reported that Sinograin, the country’s largest state-run grain company, was allowing cooking fuel in cars used for coal-derived fuel without cleaning the vehicles between shipments. Was transporting oil.

The Crystal Clear investigation, based on weeks of surveillance of tankers and interviews with drivers, revealed that the mixed import of cars was an “open secret” within the trade and a way to lower costs for shipment companies.

Despite the fact that third-party transportation suppliers were the main culprit, large cooking oil producers turned to alternative approaches, the item said, partly because there are none. Legally binding laws that impose restrictions when implemented.

There was panic among customers about the oil they were using every time they fried at home. , max regular soybean oil , Was not contaminated with cancer causing agents, heavy metals or alternative toxins.

The incident has left consumers helpless to avoid using the oil or strongly check its quality, Zeng Qiuwen, head of the Guangzhou Food Trade Association, said in an interview.

Chinese consumers have no choice but to buy the oil, he said – unless they revert to the poor strategy of making it themselves from fatty meat.

Food safety and fake-drug scandals have plagued China since the early 2000s, when unbridled financial expansion and the pursuit of business opportunities came with constant corner-cutting and lax regulatory oversight.

In 2008, a major infant-formula manufacturer was revealed to be using powder that contained melamine, a chemical that causes kidney stones. To manufacture protein material artificially. An investigation revealed that six children died and 300,000 became ill after consuming the contaminated system.

Cooking oil has been a particular concern since the early 2010s, when dozens of restaurants and sidewalk vendors were found trying to make money by scooping up leftover cooking oil from garbage or drains, processing it, and . Later cook with it again.

As the Chinese economy has lost momentum over the past decade, Xi has shifted from encouraging expansion at all costs. Equally noteworthy, he said, is providing the community with a method of protection, whether from foreign ultimatums or domestic malice.

In an apparent struggle to prevent the scandal from growing, China’s cabinet, the Atmosphere Council, on Tuesday launched an interdepartmental investigation into the transportation of edible oils, promising “severe penalties” for misconduct.

Authentic publicity talked about being on the side of the community, publishing harsh assessments of alleged misconduct, and urging companies to perform better. If confirmed by a credible investigation, the practice would be “tantamount to poisoning,” state broadcaster CCTV said.

Authentic condemnation did not stop the outrage. Online, the community asked why there were not rules requiring commercial goods and consumer goods to be transported in separate packing containers. Some offered plans to buy imported oil or produce their own oil.

As alternative retailers and web detectives began investigating the tanker industry, a flood of news came in from across the country.

Using subscription cargo-tracking products and services, journalists tracked vehicles between commercial buyers and cooking oil producers, and so they reported suspicious patterns to the local government.

Zeng, head of the Guangzhou Food Trade Association, said there will be a thorough investigation by the Atmosphere Council, but the high level of drive in the trade must turn into a habit otherwise the practice “will resurface in the future”.

There have been previous incidents of infected tankers in China, including in 2005 when journalists found evidence of molasses being transported in tanks used to carry diesel – the tanks had not been cleaned.

However, “people do not learn lessons from these past incidents,” Zhu Yi, an academic at the China Agricultural College, wrote on the Hong Kong-based website Phoenix Media.

Examining the rejected won’t do, Zhu said. Part of the difficulty in detecting contamination is that the hydrocarbons that continue to accumulate after release from the gas are too small to be detected in edible oil.

The Beijing News had discovered flaws in the entire process of bulk edible-oil transport, a collective lack of awareness and lax monitoring – meaning all types of pollutants were threats and the response needed was “prevention not detection”, Zhu said. Wrote.

A separate ailment is that the aggressive trucking business is struggling to raise cash in the recession. Cleaning the tank takes 4 to 5 hours and can cost up to $55, reports Caixin, a financial newspaper.

As soon as the issue was raised after the revelations, censors stepped in to curb unhealthy discussions by removing some articles on the matter and blocking matching tags on social media. Online commentators defended the use of community oversight and investigative journalism in exposing fitness and safety irregularities overlooked by authorities.

Despite being state-run, Beijing News is known for its in-depth reporting on social issues and its journalists consistently push the boundaries of censorship to expose wrongdoing between state-owned enterprises and local government.

Just as the untouched article has remained online until now, follow-up reporting by alternative retailers disappeared soon after it was published.

A monitoring carrier worn by journalists to keep an eye on cars went offline on Wednesday, financial information outlet Yicai reported. At that time this thing was taken offline for hours.

“It was the media that finally paid attention to the mess involving tankers transporting cooking oil,” one person wrote on social media platform Weibo. “In recent years, as the ability to monitor the media has seriously declined, more and more frightening things have happened.”