China's customs has named Hong Kong as a transit point for frozen meat smuggled into the mainland, having netted more than 3 billion yuan (HK$3.8 billion) worth of illegal frozen chicken, beef and pork - some of it up to four decades old. 
 
 In the most recent operation, officers in Changsha, Hunan province, found 800 tonnes of smuggled frozen meat worth 10 million yuan - including beef, chicken feet and duck necks - at a local wholesale market on June 1, Xinhua reported. 
 
 The meat found in Changsha had been shipped to Hong Kong in containers before being packed together and sent on to Vietnam's northern seaport of Haiphong. The meat was then broken up into smaller consignments at the border city of Mong Cai before being smuggled into China. 
 
 After arriving in Changsha, the meat had been destined for dissemination to other parts of China, such as Guangdong, Sichuan and Chongqing, where it would enter restaurants, supermarkets or be sold online. 
 
 Xinhua reported that 20 people were arrested during the customs operation in Changsha. 
 
 The origin of the frozen meat was not disclosed, but some of it had been stamped with packing dates as far back as the 1970s. 
 
 "It was too smelly! [There was] a whole truck of it. I almost threw up when I opened the door," said an officer in the operation. 
 
 Some of the meat had already started to thaw and rot when it arrived in Changsha after 12 hours on the road. It was placed in cold storage for refreezing before being sent out again. 
 
 According to Hong Kong's Centre of Food Safety, edible products imported for consumption are subject to surveillance, but it does not usually conduct tests on food being exported or re-exported. 
 
 The practice was in accordance with international standards, said a government source. 
 
 "Since Hong Kong is a popular port for transshipment, it would not be possible for the government to conduct tests on all food that comes through the city. And it would not be fair to use local resources to conduct food tests for other countries too," the source said. 
 
 A Hong Kong customs source said there was little it could do if goods were legally imported from overseas and exported from Hong Kong. 
 
 But he said customs could tip off agencies at the goods' destination if there were suspicions over the shipment. Hong Kong customs had made various seizures involving frozen meat "from time to time", but all the seizures were of relatively small quantities. 
 
 A Customs and Excise Department spokesman said that "based on risk management and intelligence-led principles, Hong Kong customs identifies and selects shipments for inspection at the entry and exit points". 
 
 Leung Ka-sing, associate professor of applied biology and chemical technology at Polytechnic University, said the meat might contain large amounts of cancer-causing chemicals to keep it preserved for such long periods, or it might carry bacteria that could cause food poisoning. 
 
 Leung said many such preservatives would be tasteless and hard to detect. Such preservatives, many of which could cause cancer when consumed in high volume, would not burn off during the cooking process unless the meat was repeatedly cleaned with boiled water. 
 
 The seizure in Changsha was part of a crackdown across 14 provinces by Chinese customs this month. More than 100,000 tonnes of frozen chicken, beef, pork and other meat illegally channelled into the mainland were found, worth more than 3 billion yuan. Twenty-one groups of smugglers were detained. 
 
 In 2014, 295,000 tonnes of frozen beef, 562,000 tonnes of frozen pork and 440,000 tonnes of frozen chicken were imported to China, according to mainland customs. 
 
 The Huanggang customs in Shenzhen also found parallel traders smuggling frozen meat and seafood into the mainland at Futian port during a crackdown in January. 
 
 The role of Hong Kong's food safety watchdog 
 
 In Hong Kong, the Centre for Food Safety conducts tests on various produce, including both fresh and frozen meat. But it is understood that the centre usually does not conduct tests on food that is earmarked for export or re-export. 
 
 According to the centre, food safety inspectors take samples for testing at various levels of the supply chain, adopting the World Health Organisation's "from farm to table" food safety strategy. It also adopts a risk-based principle in determining the types of samples to be collected, the frequency and number of samples taken and the types of analysis to be conducted. The tests cover major food groups such as fruits and vegetables, meat, poultry, aquatic products, milk and cereals. 
 
 The centre said it conducted tests on about 64,100 food samples last year - about nine samples per 1,000 people in Hong Kong. 
 
 Lawmaker Helena Wong Pik-wan, though, said it may be difficult for health officials to trace online orders mailed into the city, a loophole that has yet to be plugged. 
 
 Wong and other lawmakers have demanded the centre increase the number of samples it tests, while the centre said it had a relatively high testing rate compared to overseas jurisdictions. 
 
 Last year, there were 139 unsatisfactory samples found among tested items, resulting in an overall satisfaction rate of 99.8 per cent. 
 
 Emily Tsang 

 A warehouse storing smuggled frozen meat has been seized in Shenzhou, South China's Guangdong province in this file photo. Photo taken on April 15, 2015. [Photo/IC] 
 
 Fourteen gangs involved in the smuggling of frozen meat products that pose huge health risks have been hunted down and the products seized in a recent crackdown, the General Administration of Customs said. 
 
 Customs officials sealed more than 100,000 metric tons of smuggled frozen meat worth up to 3 billion yuan ($483 million), including frozen chicken wings, beef and pork, the administration said. 
 
 The crackdown took place in June in 14 provinces and regions. 
 
 The Changsha Administration of Customs in Hunan province broke up two gangs with 20 members suspected of smuggling frozen meat products on June 1 and seized 800 tons of products worth more than 10 million yuan. 
 
 It is the largest case involving smuggled frozen meat products in the province's history. 
 
 "The products fully filled an entire compartment. It was smelly, and I nearly threw up when I opened the door," said Zhang Tao, an administration official. 
 
 According to Yang Bo, deputy director of the Anti-Smuggling Bureau of the Changsha Administration of Customs, smuggled meat products are not inspected, and this is unsafe because people may get life-threatening illnesses if they eat products that have bacteria and viruses such as bird flu or foot-and-mouth disease. 
 
 Yang said another problem with smuggled meat is that much of it has expired. 
 
 Officers from the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region's Administration of Customs found that some of the confiscated smuggled frozen meat is far older than the given expiration dates suggest, with some being more than 40 years old. 
 
 Experts say that as long as frozen meat shows no signs of thawing, customers can't tell fresh meat from bad meat that is decades old. 
 
 When smuggled meat is moved under poor conditions or repeatedly thawed－or even refrozen after the meat has already gone bad－the threat it poses will be especially serious. 
 
 Changsha customs said that high profits have already spurred the creation of an extensive supply chain. 
 
 Smugglers generally purchase meat for very low prices from foreign countries, and then have it delivered to Hong Kong in refrigerated containers. 
 
 The products will then be moved to the mainland via Vietnam, with smugglers hiring residents of border areas to move the products to Chinese border cities and then on to Changsha before the products are transported to sites around the country. 
 
 "To save costs, smugglers often hire ordinary vehicles instead of refrigerated ones. So the meat has often thawed out several times before reaching customers," said Yang, deputy director of the anti-smuggling bureau. 
 
 The boom in sales of agricultural products on Internet platforms also assists smugglers. 
 
 Experts called for the establishment of a nationwide supervision network and enhanced controls in border regions to prevent the products from entering China. 
 
 Xinhua contributed to this story. 

 BEIJING — Nearly half a billion dollars worth of smuggled frozen meat — including some which was more than 40 years old — has been seized in China, according to officials and local media. 
 
 More than 100,000 tons of smuggled chicken wings, beef and pork were recovered in a massive operation spanning 14 provinces, the state-run China Daily reported. The newspaper quoted customs officials as saying that much of the smuggled meat — valued at around $483 million overall — was beyond its expiration date. 
 
 The meat was seized in a massive crackdown aimed at breaking up smuggling gangs, one customs official told NBC News. Huang — an official in central Hunan province who insisted on only using his last name — said that 20 suspected gang members were arrested in the operation, the largest the province has seen. 
 
 "It was smelly, and I nearly threw up when I opened the door," one Customs official told the China Daily of discovering rotting, smuggled meat in a container. 
 
 Officials in southwest China's Guangxi province said some of the smuggled meat dated back to the 1970s, according to China's state news agency Xinhua. 
 
 "To save costs, smugglers often hire ordinary vehicles instead of refrigerated ones," one anti-smuggling operative was quoted as saying. "So the meat has often thawed out several times before reaching customers." 
 
 It was not immediately clear where the smuggled meat originated or how it had been stored for decades. 
 
 Food scandals are a sensitive subject in China, where authorities remain on alert following the 2008 melamine scandal which caused the deaths of 6 babies and sickened 300,000. 
 
 Julia Zhou contributed to this report.
– Chinese customs officials made a gruesome discovery this month during a smuggling crackdown, and the words of one of the authorities offers a vivid description: "It was smelly, and I nearly threw up when I opened the door." Inside the container: part of the 100,000-plus tons of frozen beef, pork, and chicken wings seized during the crackdown, China Daily reports. Only some of it wasn't frozen anymore. A customs official tells NBC News that 20 alleged gang members were busted in the raids. The worth of the meat was estimated at $483 million, even though much of it was way past its expiration date—with some from the 1970s. Smuggling frozen meat is apparently big business in China, with smugglers buying up meat in other countries at discount prices, then sending it to Hong Kong in refrigerated containers, per China Daily. But that's where things go awry, as smugglers hire locals to get the meat back to China via Vietnam. "To save costs, smugglers often hire ordinary vehicles instead of refrigerated ones," a director of the country's anti-smuggling bureau tells the paper. "So the meat has often thawed out several times before reaching customers." This poses a major public-health threat, given that some of the meat has been refrozen after it's spoiled. According to Hong Kong's Center for Food Safety, edible items imported into the country are "subject to surveillance," but not testing, the South China Morning Post notes. (A Chinese company that supplied meat to McDonald's was busted for false expiration dates.)