Public outrage is mounting in China over allegations that a major state-owned food company has been cutting costs by using the same tankers to carry fuel and cooking oil – without cleaning them in between.

The scandal, which implicates China’s largest grain storage and transport company Sinograin, and private conglomerate Hopefull Grain and Oil Group, has raised concerns of food contamination in a country rocked in recent decades by a string of food and drug safety scares – and evoked harsh criticism from Chinese state media.

It was an “open secret” in the transport industry that the tankers were doing double duty, according to a report in the state-linked outlet Beijing News last week, which alleged that trucks carrying certain fuel or chemical liquids were also used to transport edible liquids such as cooking oil, syrup and soybean oil, without proper cleaning procedures.

  • @SeattleRain
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    -105 months ago

    Stop, an empty tanker truck can have a huge amount of fuel in it. You do know that fuel has a lot of impurities right? If you don’t believe me just pull up some pictures of fuel tanks on cars being opened. They can be caked with sediment and heavy metals at the bottom even after a few years.

    You are a bad dangerous shill.

    • @[email protected]
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      95 months ago

      A simple, “your scaling argument doesn’t really apply since the amount of residue left behind scales with the volume, not area” would have sufficed.

      Gasoline is a pretty powerful solvent; would residue left behind that doesn’t come off from gasoline be liberated by cooking oil? It’s an honest question.

      And I sure hope the regulatory agencies and shipping companies in my country do a better job than in China. This sort of thing is terrifying; I’m just curious as to an emotionless analysis of how bad this likely is. What concentration of benzene is acceptable? “None” would be best but we already breathe it. Would contaminated cooking oil likely be equivalent to…inhaling once at a gas station? A wet martini with diesel instead of vermouth?

      • AwesomeLowlander
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        105 months ago

        Some people like asking hypothetical questions, others just take every random question as a personal affront.