In China, a month ago, the incident of “mixing edible oil in tankers” exposed, which caused a nationwide uproar, becoming one of the most serious food safety crises in mainland China in recent years. Despite being referred to as “poisoning” by the public and the presence of such practices in the tanker transportation industry in China for many years, the authorities have downplayed the issue in their latest announcement, sparking discontent among the public.
On July 2, the “New Beijing News” disclosed a case of a coal-based oil tanker transporting edible oil, marking the most serious food safety crisis in mainland China since the 2008 melamine-tainted milk powder incident.
According to reports, after transporting coal-based oil, the tanker did not clean the tank but directly filled it with edible soybean oil before leaving the factory. The tanker driver revealed to reporters that the mixing and lack of cleaning of tanks for transporting food and chemical liquids is an open secret within the tanker transportation industry.
On July 9, the State Council Food Safety Office of the Chinese Communist Party organized a joint investigation team involving the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Public Security, the Ministry of Transport, the State Administration for Market Regulation, and the National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration to investigate the incident.
One month later, on August 25, the State Council Food Safety Office issued a notification regarding the “irregularities in the transportation of edible vegetable oil by tankers,” mentioning the two implicated tankers exposed by the media with license plates Jie E5476W and Jie E6365Z.
According to the notification, authorities imposed administrative penalties or criminal accountability on relevant transportation companies, vehicle owners, and drivers. Punishments were handed out to 7 companies including COFCO Oils & Fats (Tianjin) Co., Ltd., Hebei Sanhe Huifeng Grain and Oil Group Refined Vegetable Oil Co., Ltd., with the highest fine reaching 2.86 million Chinese yuan and the lowest penalty being the confiscation of illegal gains amounting to 260,000 yuan.
The official notification mentioned that some of the implicated oil products were only distributed to a specific location in Inner Mongolia, emphasizing that “no similar issues have been found in other regions of China.”
The controversy sparked by the aforementioned notification led to interpretations and ridicule by social media users. One Weibo user mockingly said, “The cause is just individual, the process is basically harmless, and the results are all under control. Let’s not make a fuss about this in the future. Although it seems a bit coincidental, just gloss over it.”
Many netizens commented, “This is an open secret in the entire industry. It took just over a month to investigate only two vehicles? Have these two vehicles only transported goods twice in many years? Isn’t this a joke?”
“This widespread food safety incident has only made us aware of the existence of the Food Safety Office. These government officials go to work every day to drink tea, read newspapers, and play cards. They only bother to act when something goes wrong. It’s really hard for these public servants. Next time, they can skip the act and simply blame the journalists for fabricating news material.”
In fact, the mixing of edible oil in tankers has long been an open secret in the mainland China’s tanker transportation industry.
According to a report by “Time Weekly,” the owner of a freight company in Henan revealed that since mid-2022, the tanker transportation industry has gradually become saturated and engaged in a price war. Tanker companies, in pursuit of more profits, use regular tankers for transporting hazardous goods as if they were hazardous tankers illegally transporting petroleum, and vice versa, leading to cross-contamination. Cleaning the tank would incur additional costs, which could be avoided if the buying company does not strictly enforce it.
After the “coal-oil tanker mixing edible oil” incident was exposed, companies involved such as Yihai Kerry Group, Huifeng Grain and Oil Group, Shandong Lu Hua Group, and COFCO Group in the edible oil industry became the focus of public attention.
As a result of the incident, the leading edible oil manufacturer, Yihai Kerry, suffered continuous plummeting of its A-share stock price. By July 10, the stock price hit a historic low, causing a total market value loss of 6.831 billion yuan in just two days.
With the widespread attention on the “coal-oil tanker mixing edible oil” incident, access to the tracking data of implicated tankers previously available on third-party data platforms, as investigated by journalists from “First Financial,” is now unavailable. Additionally, authorities have suppressed relevant reports and suppressed related information.
This nationally highlighted incident involving the mixing in tanker transportation is not a recent phenomenon. As early as 2005, the “Southern Daily” reported on the tanker mess of “difficulties in preventing cross-contamination during tanker cleaning, where after transporting dangerous chemicals, they transport food.”
In 2015, Hunan TV’s urban channel exposed the secret transportation of toxic chemicals in tanker trucks loaded with edible oil.
China has repeatedly faced food safety incidents, such as the “gutter oil” exposé in the mid-2000s reported by “China Quality Report,” revealing the illegal flows of inedible oil from hidden points in neighboring provinces and cities in Hebei to Nanhe county, Xingtai city.
In 2008, China witnessed the melamine-tainted milk powder scandal, where infants consuming Sanlu Group’s milk powder were found to have kidney stones caused by the chemical substance melamine. The official report confirmed nearly 300,000 affected children.