From the unlinkable South China Morning Post, this exquisite story of intestinal perfidy in Guangzhou province. I couldn't find it online, even with our SCMP subscription, but I thought it was so important, I actually transcribed it for my readers:

Lard made from rotting offal sold to food makers

 

By Kevin Huang, South China Morning Post, August 24, 2005

 

Unlicensed factories in Guangzhou have continued producing lard from rotting pig offal and selling for human consumption this week despite a snap check by government inspectors last week.

 

Guangzhou's Panyu district has more than 20 unlicensed factories extracting cut-price lard from pig bowels bought from meat works and food markets, the Information Times reported.

 

The offal is transported each morning to factories in a large mountainside industrial estate where workers extract the fat in massive, heated woks. Each factory covers about 2,000 square meters and local residents say the factories run 24 hours a day.

 

One employee from Hunan said his factory could sell about five tones of fat a day.

An Information Times reporter who visited the site said the factories housed baskets of fly-covered offal. The fat was originally extracted for industrial use, but most was being sold to nearby cake shops, snack booths and restaurants as wells as outlets in Guangzhou's Haizhu district.

 

Residents said the smell of rotting meat was overwhelming and the government should close down the factories.

 

Panyu's commercial and quality supervision authorities mounted a surprise inspection of the factories a week ago. Zhang Yi, vice director of the Dashi township Bureau of Industry and Commerce, said several factories examined in the past week were legal and held production licenses.

 

“The production is legal if the oil is for industrial use, even if smelly rotten pig bowels are used,” Mr Zhang said. “It is recycling of resources.”

 

This is one of the grossest things I have ever read. And I have a high gross tolerance. I once stood next to the days-old rotting carcass of a sperm whale on an Indonesian beach. But I didn't have to eat it. Guangzhou residents (Martyn, are you listening?), you might want to look twice at that baozi before you get stuck in.