“Don’t call yourself Chinese if you haven’t tried everything on the periodic table,” goes a saying in China, a reference to a string of food safety scandals in recent years.

“如果你还没有把元素周期表上的所有东西都尝过一遍，就不要说自己是中国人，”中国人用这句俗话暗示近年来的一连串食品安全丑闻。

In the most recent episode, 100,000 tons of smuggled² frozen meat has been seized across China, some of it more than 40 years old, the state news agency Xinhua reported. The chicken wings, beef and pork uncovered in the customs operation in 14 provinces and regions were valued at up to 3 billion renminbi, or $483 million, and 20 people have been arrested, it said.

最新的一个丑闻是：据官方通讯社新华社报道，中国查获了10万吨走私冻肉，其中一些是40多年前生产的。海关在14个省和地区开展的行动中，发现了货值超过30亿元人民币的鸡翅、牛肉和猪肉等冻品，已有20人遭到逮捕。

“Don’t call yourself Chinese if you haven’t tried everything on the periodic table,” goes a saying in China, a reference to a string of food safety scandals in recent years.

“如果你还没有把元素周期表上的所有东西都尝过一遍，就不要说自己是中国人，”中国人用这句俗话暗示近年来的一连串食品安全丑闻。

In the most recent episode, 100,000 tons of smuggled frozen meat has been seized across China, some of it more than 40 years old, the state news agency Xinhua reported. The chicken wings, beef and pork uncovered in the customs operation in 14 provinces and regions were valued at up to 3 billion renminbi, or $483 million, and 20 people have been arrested, it said.

最新的一个丑闻是：据官方通讯社新华社报道，中国查获了10万吨走私冻肉，其中一些是40多年前生产的。海关在14个省和地区开展的行动中，发现了货值超过30亿元人民币的鸡翅、牛肉和猪肉等冻品，已有20人遭到逮捕。

40年前的冻肉走私进入中国

The origin of the meat was not clear. According to Xinhua, however, the meat typically was shipped to Hong Kong, then taken to Vietnam, where traders would smuggle¹ it across the border to China without declaring it with customs officials or undergoing the required entry-exit inspection³ and quarantine. Some of the meat was found stamped with packing dates going back to the 1970s.

这些冻肉的来源尚不清楚。但据新华社报道，它们通常被运到香港，再发往越南，然后由商贩偷运入境，既不向海关官员申报，也不进行必要的出入境检验检疫。一些冻肉上的印戳显示加工时间早在20世纪70年代。

To hold down costs, the meat would be transported in ordinary, nonrefrigerated trucks, sometimes for more than 12 hours.

为了压低成本，这些冻肉会用普通卡车，而不是冷冻卡车运输，有时途中会超过12小时。

According to the Changsha Administration of Customs, in Hunan Province, one-third of the meat on offer at the largest wholesale⁴ market in the city was found to be illegally imported.

湖南省长沙海关总署表示，他们发现在该城市最大的批发市场中，有三分之一的肉类属于非法进口。

“It was too smelly! A truck full of it! I almost threw up when the door opened,” Zhang Tao, a Changsha official involved in the crackdown, was quoted as saying by Xinhua.

“太臭了，整整一车厢，打开门差点吐了，”新华社引述参与这次行动的长沙官员张涛（化名）说。

After being refrozen, the meat was distributed to retailers⁵, supermarkets and restaurants in Guangdong, Sichuan and other provinces. China Central Television, the state broadcaster, showed workers in the southern city of Shenzhen repackaging the imported meat with Chinese labels, even though imported products, if legal, tend to be more profitable than local ones.Some of the meat was sold on the Internet. Many meat retailers have set up profiles on Taobao, the online shopping website owned by Alibaba, offering local and imported meat, often promising⁶ same-day delivery. Some claim to be selling beef imported from the United States, even though such beef has been barred from the Chinese mainland since 2003, following outbreaks of bovine⁷ spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease.

这些肉类被重新冷冻后，发往广东、四川等省的零售商、超市和餐馆。在中国官方媒体中央电视台播出的视频中，南部城市深圳的工人用中国的标签对这些进口肉类进行重新包装，虽然出售合法进口的产品往往比本地肉类利润更高。有些冻肉则在网上出售。很多肉类零售商都在阿里巴巴旗下的购物网站淘宝上开设了网店，出售本地和进口肉类，而且往往承诺当天到货。一些网店自称出售美国进口的牛肉，虽然自从牛海绵状脑病即疯牛病爆发之后，中国大陆自2003年以来已经禁止了这些牛肉的销售。

In May, Deputy Trade Representative Robert Holleyman of the United States said that “huge amounts” of beef were bypassing the ban. American trade officials said that while it was not known how much of this smuggled beef was passing through Hong Kong, a semiautonomous Chinese territory with a separate customs system, the amount of beef entering Hong Kong from the United States alone was greater than the total consumed in Hong Kong from all sources.

今年5月，美国副贸易代表罗伯特·霍利曼(Robert Holleyman)表示，绕过该禁令的牛肉“数量庞大”。美国贸易官员表示，虽然目前还不清楚有多少这种走私牛肉途经了香港，但仅从美国进港的牛肉量，就已经超过了香港消耗的所有来源的牛肉量。香港是中国境内一个半自治的区域，有独立的海关系统。

“Theoretically, China has strict food safety regulations, but execution is often the problem,” Peter Cheung, director of the Food and Nutritional⁸ Science Program at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said in an interview. “I personally would not buy meat online.”

“理论上讲，中国有严格的食品安全法规，但问题往往出在执行上，”香港中文大学食品及营养科学学科主任张志强在接受采访时说。“我自己不会在网上购买肉类。”