Recently, a food safety scandal has been exposed in Nanning City, Guangxi, where several illegal sites profit by force-feeding goats in preparation for market release.
According to the report by Xinjing News, a journalist discovered multiple illegal sites in Nanning where goats are fed to increase their weight. Thousands of goats are brought here from Yunnan, Guizhou, Sichuan, and other places. Some individuals insert a white plastic tube deep into the goats’ throats and use high pressure to feed them, a local practice known as “maintenance.” A goat weighing sixty to seventy kilograms can gain seven to twenty kilograms from force-feeding. “Some goats that are force-fed may die on the spot. Even for those that survive, they would not be able to survive once brought home,” said an informant.
Subsequently, the journalist followed the force-fed goats and found that they were traded the same night at the cattle and sheep trading center of Guangxi New and Fresh Meat Products Co., Ltd. in the Xixiangtang District. At this trading center, goats are sold without undergoing any quarantine or disinfection procedures. When buyers request quarantine certificates, sellers obtain certificates from other markets to provide buyers. Moreover, goats that died from force-feeding in large numbers are openly sold in the market, some of which have clearly deteriorated.
It has become an open secret in the local cattle and sheep market that goats are force-fed before entering the market. According to the informant, “The entire industry operates this way, and it is impossible to find goats that have not been fed.” The only difference lies in whether more or less feed was administered.
The informant also revealed that with the rise of cattle and sheep trading, there are hidden “black” slaughter sites near the trading market that provide slaughtering services for merchants and buyers.
Following a three-wheeler of a goat buyer, the Xinjing News journalist arrived at a slaughterhouse near the trading center and witnessed the extremely rudimentary conditions. Apart from using a specialized machine for dehairing, almost all other processes were carried out on the ground. Unprocessed dead goats, whole goats after dehairing, cut-up goat meat, unprocessed offal, were all haphazardly piled on the ground.
In response to this, Dr. Yun Wuxin, a food engineering Ph.D., emphasized that even goats that died from force-feeding require professional assessment and inspection of factors such as meat hardness, pH value, and texture to determine if the meat is toxic or harmful. The biggest risk is that some diseased livestock that died illegally might enter the market, and consumers would be unable to discern the issue, posing a significant food safety hazard.