Chinese companies transport cooking oil in toxic fuel trucks? Major scandal sparks investigation
A man cycles past storage facilities of China's state grain stockpiler Sinograin near Tianjin port in 2019
The Chinese government has set up a high-level investigation team after allegations surfaced that fuel tankers were being used to transport cooking oil, without being cleaned properly in between.
On Tuesday (Jul 9), the food safety office announced the interdepartmental investigation while pledging that those responsible forany malpractice “will be severely punished in accordance with the law".
The state-owned company has been identified asSinograin, China's largest grain storage and transport company in a report published in Beijing News last week. The report added that a private conglomerate named Hopefull Grain and Oil Group was also involved in the scandal, with both players denying their role.
“Sinograin requires all units in the system to strictly fulfil their responsibilities, abide by work standards and prevent contamination risks to grain and oil reserves,” the company said in a statement posted on its official Weibo (X-like social media platform)account.
Hopefull Grain and Oil Group clarified to state-owned news outlets that“relevant departments” had conducted the investigation and would soon make an announcement. The company claimed that one of the tankers reported in the media report was not owned by the conglomerate and that there were no quality issues with the brand's oil products.
Notably, tankers in China are not limited to any particular type of goods. So in theory, they can carry food products straight after transporting coal-based oils. However, not cleaning them means subjecting millions to toxic chemicals which could prove fatal in many cases.
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Chinese public spooked
Meanwhile, the public in China has been panicking ever since the news first broke with netizens taking to social media to express their shock.
“Even the cooking oil essential to people’s daily lives has now become problematic… Ordinary people cannot be properly safeguarded…Now I just want to scoff at (phrases like) ‘rule of law’ and ‘serving the people’ whenever I see them,” one of the users said on Weibo.
“This is much worse than the Sanlu scandal, it can’t be settled with just [a] statement,” added another user, referring to the 2008 milk scandal in which nearly 300,000 children fell sick while six died after drinkingpowdered milk contaminated with high levels of the industrial chemical melamine.
The Chinese government said it had noted the concerns and promised to punish any companies and individuals involved in wrongdoing. At the local level, bothHebei and Tianjin provincial governments had also launched their own probe into the matter.
(With inputs from agencies)