SHANGHAI: Zhabei District government yesterday confiscated about 30 tons of smuggled South American beef from a cold storage which did not pass the required quarantine tests.
The market supervision department and police raided Yuda Grocery Food store on No. 258 Jincheng Road yesterday where frozen beef was being sold at cheaper prices.
The officers found most of the meats had no wrappings at all while some of them had English labels claiming they were produced in Brazil and Argentina. The packages did not have entry and exit quarantine labels on them, the district government said.
The owner of the storage, a man named Chen Yuwen, was missing when the police arrived. Officers found the storage staff trying to transport the meat to other places, an official with the government said.
The beef was confiscated and will be destroyed, the official added. The police have detained the staff and are looking for the owner.
Nearby residents told the Shanghai Television Station that beef packed in foreign labels were sold at the store for cheaper prices.
The beef tendon was sold at 46 yuan per kilogram, about 30 percent cheaper than market prices, the TV station reported.
The staff claimed that most of the beef were imported from Brazil at discounted prices.
