40年前的凍肉走私進入中國

“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.

“如果你還沒有把元素週期表上的所有東西都嘗過一遍，就不要說自己是中國人，”中國人用這句俗話暗示近年來的一連串食品安全醜聞。

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.

最新的一個醜聞是：據官方通訊社新華社報道，中國查獲了10萬噸走私凍肉，其中一些是40多年前生產的。海關在14個省和地區開展的行動中，發現了貨值超過30億元人民幣的雞翅、牛肉和豬肉等凍品，已有20人遭到逮捕。

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 smuggle it across the border to China without declaring it with customs officials or undergoing the required entry-exit inspection and quarantine. Some of the meat was found stamped with packing dates going back to the 1970s.

這些凍肉的來源尚不清楚。但據新華社報道，它們通常被運到香港，再發往越南，然後由商販偷運入境，既不向海關官員申報，也不進行必要的出入境檢驗檢疫。一些凍肉上的印戳顯示加工時間早在20世紀70年代。

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

爲了壓低成本，這些凍肉會用普通卡車，而不是冷凍卡車運輸，有時途中會超過12小時。

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

湖南省長沙海關總署表示，他們發現在該城市最大的批發市場中，有三分之一的肉類屬於非法進口。

“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，整整一車廂，打開門差點吐了，”新華社引述參與這次行動的長沙官員張濤（化名）說。

After being refrozen, the meat was distributed to retailers, 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 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 promising 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 bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or mad cow disease.

這些肉類被重新冷凍後，發往廣東、四川等省的零售商、超市和餐館。在中國官方媒體中央電視臺播出的視頻中，南部城市深圳的工人用中國的標籤對這些進口肉類進行重新包裝，雖然出售合法進口的產品往往比本地肉類利潤更高。有些凍肉則在網上出售。很多肉類零售商都在阿里巴巴旗下的購物網站淘寶上開設了網店，出售本地和進口肉類，而且往往承諾當天到貨。一些網店自稱出售美國進口的牛肉，雖然自從牛海綿狀腦病即瘋牛病爆發之後，中國大陸自2003年以來已經禁止了這些牛肉的銷售。

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，美國副貿易代表羅伯特·霍利曼(Robert Holleyman)表示，繞過該禁令的牛肉“數量龐大”。美國貿易官員表示，雖然目前還不清楚有多少這種走私牛肉途經了香港，但僅從美國進港的牛肉量，就已經超過了香港消耗的所有來源的牛肉量。香港是中國境內一個半自治的區域，有獨立的海關係統。

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

“理論上講，中國有嚴格的食品安全法規，但問題往往出在執行上，”香港中文大學食品及營養科學學科主任張志強在接受採訪時說。“我自己不會在網上購買肉類。”