Sunday, May 20, 2012, 4:09 AM CST – China

• Like us on Facebook
• Signup for Email
• Subscribe to RSS

Special Report

• Print Article
• Write the Editors

Gutter Oil

Sick Slick

The exposure of a vast nationwide network reselling used cooking oil to unwitting consumers is a further blow to China’s already-reeling food standards authorities

December 2011 Issue | by He Jiangyong, Liu Ziqian

Clouds of flies buzz in the rank air. A 1.5m-diameter vat hidden among a small copse is bubbling with thick brownish liquid, giving off an unbearable stench. Around the pot are piles of as­sorted rotting kitchen waste. A number of iron barrels caked with rancid grease stand side by side, awaiting their unpleasant car­go. Just another day at Ninghai, Zhejiang’s largest “gutter oil” processing plant. That is, until the police arrive.

“The site was more disgusting than a murder scene. I’d rather be in a cesspit,” police officer Zhou Guoliang told News­China, revealing that the discovery of this large processing operation was the smok­ing gun they’d been waiting for. Local po­lice could now go about busting a ring of criminals who were extracting used edible oil from sewers and restaurant fryers, fil­tering out visible contaminants and resell­ing it on the open market. Though viable for industrial use, gutter oil contains huge quantities of toxic contaminants which have been linked to abdominal pain and diarrhea. Long-term ingestion of gutter oil has also been alleged to cause develop­mental disabilities as well as intestinal and gastric cancers.

The Chinese first became aware of gut­ter oil in 2000 when a vendor was caught selling edible oil extracted from restaurant garbage disposals. A string of similar cases were later uncovered by investigative jour­nalists. National media and the authorities claimed these were “isolated incidents” involving small underground workshops. However, the Zhejiang case blew attempts to cover up the scale of China’s gutter oil industry out of the water. Acting on lo­cal reports of “smelly pots” concealed in forests, police in Zhejiang, Shandong and Henan provinces jointly smashed a net­work engaged in gutter oil processing and retail across 14 provinces.

Investigation

The owners of the Ninghai rendering vat, a married couple, confessed to purchasing kitchen waste from local restaurants and “refining” it by simply skimming oil resi­due off the surface.

“We suspected that the oil might be for some dubious purpose, but we could not confirm that it was resold to restaurants,” said Feng Weifeng, the head of the inves­tigation team. He told our reporters that both the couple and the buyers of their “refined” oil asserted that the oil was sold to chemical plants, not restaurants.

It was the confession of another suspect, oil vendor Huang Changshui, that broke the case. He told police his buyer had tested the acidity of his product, which in­dicated that the oil was intended for later human consumption, as PH testing of in­dustrial oil is not necessary.

Further investigation led police to Gelin Company, a biodiesel manufacturer reg­istered in Pingyin County, Jinan, capital of Shandong Province. Covering an area of 10,000 square meters, the factory com­pound was heavily guarded and equipped with security cameras on all sides. One night in June, policemen waiting out­side the factory saw a tanker truck drive into the compound, and five hours later, a second suspicious tanker drove out of the gate. They also spotted another truck loaded with white clay, which is typically used to absorb visible contaminants and “bleach” gutter oil.

The police soon arrested Liu Liguo, the company owner, and another eight suspects, with 694 tons of gutter oil seized. According to Liu’s confession, his com­pany could sell 400-500 tons of gutter oil per month, rising to 700-800 tons at peak times. Like the suspects previously de­tained in Zhejiang, Liu denied any knowl­edge of where his gutter oil was resold.

“[The buyers] told me they definitely wouldn’t use the oil in food, but I have no way to track them down and check if they were telling the truth,” Liu told police.

Yet, 10 days after Gelin Company was closed down, the police seized over 100 crates of gutter oil relabeled as well-known edible oil brands, plus another 30 more tons in bulk storage, from an open market in Zhengzhou, Henan Province.

Yuan Yi, the salesperson apprehended at the scene, told police that it is an open secret within the “industry” that gutter oil is generally sold as “ricegerm” oil. “Cur­rently, oil at this price level is almost all ‘ricegerm oil,’” she said. “Gutter oil is also extensively sold blended with pure edible oil.”

“We are not the only seller on the mar­ket,” Yuan continued. “Every day, four or five tankers will park in front of the mar­ket, and anyone can buy their oil. Nobody asks to see food safety certificates. It is im­possible for us to distinguish bad oil.”

Hard to Tell

Despite having eight years of experience working in restaurants, Li Wei, a chef in Beijing, told NewsChina that the only means for the restaurant to judge the qual­ity of the oil it buys is the price tag.

Take the soybean oil widely used in Bei­jing’s busy restaurants. In bulk, generic soybean oil is typically 10 percent cheaper than branded oil. A 200-seat restaurant uses some 17.5 kilos of oil per day, costing around 5,000 yuan (US$735) per month, while those specializing in spicy Sichuan cuisine will spend at least double that. It is no surprise that Li Wei, now head chef at a Chongqing-style hotpot restaurant, ad­mitted that he sometimes would try to get cheaper oil sold in bulk, most of which, according to him, is mixed with other low-cost oils such as palm or cotton oil, or even in rare cases blended with gutter oil.

Although gutter oil in its raw form is translucent, has an unpleasant smell, and is similar in color to Coca-Cola, it is hard to distinguish from pure edible bean oil after it has been bleached and had its pH neutralized by the addition of chemical alkalis.

Containing a high amount of animal fat, gutter oil generally has a higher freez­ing point than ordinary oil. Li often tests the freezing point of the oil he buys to identify gutter oil, but this method does not work if the oil is mixed with pure oil. An alternative is to detect a residual odor, but few chefs have a sense of smell refined enough to detect a difference between re­fined gutter oil and fresh soybean oil.

“Restaurants caught using gutter oil are generally exposed by customers,” Li Wei told NewsChina. “I have never heard of the authorities detecting the use of gutter oil in restaurants.”

An anonymous inspector from a lo­cal food security bureau in Shanghai told NewsChina that they use litmus paper to determine the pH of edible oils. However, gutter oil processors typically add caus­tic soda to the oil to neutralize the pH, making it indistinguishable from pure edible oil without more advanced testing. Police revealed that only two out of 10 samples of gutter oil seized in the Henan and Shandong sweeps failed to come up to national standards of purity. However, when tested according to Beijing’s more rigorous municipal food safety standards, which employ four categories of indicators and indexes to identify gutter oil, seven samples were shown to be contaminated.

Lax Supervision

China issued its first management regula­tion on kitchen waste in 2000, which for­bade processors to sell waste oil for human consumption. But the regulation failed to specify the punishment for violators, mak­ing it little more than a scrap of paper.

In July 2010, two months before the 2000 regulation was annulled, the State Council, China’s cabinet, issued a new regulation on kitchen waste, hoping to tackle the gutter oil problem at its source, through methods such as requiring waste collectors to have State licenses, only to find the “edible” gutter oil still flooding the marketplace.

This latest regulation demands that an inspection system be set up jointly by the departments of commerce and industry, quality supervision, food security, health and public security. However, the media believes this will only allow the authori­ties to defer responsibility and will fail to tackle the root of the problem.

“Various supervision departments fre­quent my restaurant every month to car­ry out testing,” Wang Na, an owner of a private restaurant in Beijing, told News­China. “Only once have they checked for gutter oil. They asked me if I used it, I said no, they checked the brand of oil I used, and that was the extent of their ‘testing.’”

“We only have certificate givers, but no real supervisors,” Liu Liguo, the owner of Gelin Company, said. “[Adulterated] oil should only be used industrially. If my ac­tions are immoral, then so are the actions of the supervisory authorities.”

Editor's Picks

© 2012 NewsChina Magazine – All rights reserved. | Privacy Policy