A Yunnan county government has vowed to come up with an alternate way of disposing of seized smuggled meat in the wake of an extremely disturbing report that exposed how local villagers had been turning “landfill meat” into a veritable gold mine.

Jinping county is located in southernmost Yunnan province and shares a border with Vietnam, over which frequently come frozen meat smugglers. Sometimes, local police are able to catch these smugglers, who are often transporting poor quality and even rotten meat which had made its way to Vietnam from countries like the United States, Germany, and Brazil.

Occasionally, police seize quite a considerable haul of this illicit meat, which, of course, has not gone through inspection and poses a number of obvious health risks, and then they are left to figure out what to do with hundreds of tons of seized, shoddy, smuggled meat.

The solution that local officials have come up with is to bury that meat underground in a landfill. On April 28th, 249 tons of frozen beef, tripe, and chicken feet that had been seized earlier in the month were dumped and then buried in this landfill, Yunnan.cn reported.

Beforehand, the meat was reportedly mixed with caustic soda. After it was buried, a layer of cement was poured on top and for the next four days police officers stood watch over the meat burial ground, 24/7, until the cement hardened into concrete.

The reasons for these precautions became obvious on May 2nd when police left the scene. Reporters for Yunnan TV who had been tipped off watched as more than a hundred local villagers immediately swarmed the landfill site, cracked away the concrete, dug up the confiscated meat, and took it away.

The opportunistic villagers worked around the clock and by the end of the following day there was little left in the pit.

It turns out that this was not the villagers’ first rodeo. Reportedly, they have engaged in this practice for at least the last two years. A particularly large haul of seized meat is said to bring out as many as 500 people to the landfill.

It’s not exactly clear where all this meat goes after it leaves the dump. More than likely, the stuff finds its way into the stocks of countryside meat manufacturers and roadside food stalls in the local area.

Considering the large number of people involved, digging up confiscated meat would appear to be quite a profitable little side job for people in this poverty-stricken country. In one trip to the landfill, reporters discovered that nearby parking spaces were going for 50 yuan — a price that seems a bit steep for a rural garbage dump.

The exposé on all of this was first aired on Yunnan TV on Thursday. Since then, details, photos, and videos have been circulating around, revolting Chinese social media, provoking netizens to strongly recommend that the local government change its protocols for getting rid of confiscated meat.

https://v.qq.com/txp/iframe/player.html?vid=r0649rk9ajc&width=500&height=375&auto=0

In response, the government has promised to become more “scientific” and “stringent” in its approach without actually explaining what that approach will be — really, it’s probably best that we all don’t know.

Meanwhile, officials have announced that they are carrying out a full investigation into the practice, including tracking down where that most recent 249 tons of confiscated meat has gone off too.

In addition, seven of the alleged meat miners have been arrested… only a few hundred more to go?

[Images via Yunnan TV]

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