JUST a few months ago a meat-processing plant in Shanghai’s Jiading district won a food safety award. Shanghai Husi Food, one of several such facilities in China owned by OSI Group, an American firm that sells meat products to the world’s leading fast-food chains, was named an “Advanced Unit (A-Class) of Safe Food Production” by local authorities.
Not quite. A hidden-camera exposé, done by local reporters, appears to show workers at the plant relabelling expired meat as fresh and handling food with bare hands. It appeared that the floor of the processing plant was covered with rubbish and sewage, and meat was scooped up off the floor and thrown into mixers. Rotting meat was apparently mixed together with fresh meat and packaged for sale. In this and other ways, the A-Class plant made a mockery of “safe food production.”