Ill beef smuggle ring busted in Jiangsu

Police in east China's Jiangsu province have confiscated around 300 tons of beef imported from a mad cow disease-affected area in Brazil, according to the state-run news agency Xinhua.

Twenty seven suspects, including retailers and suppliers, have been held in custody in the province, including in Guanyun County of Lianyungang city.

The beef was sold at 42-44 yuan per kilogram, almost half of the usual price at local markets, which drew a lot of attention from customers.

Mad cow disease is contagious and transmittable from cows to humans.

China has banned imported beef from Brazil since 2012 when the South American country was hit by mad cow disease.

Police say the low price of the beef also struck the markets, forcing retailers to purchase the Brazilian beef from suspected smugglers.

The case was first reported to the county's food security commission by local citizens in January this year.

Local authorities confiscated nearly 900 kilograms of suspicious beef which was wrapped in packaging with only English letters.

Police later questioned the retailers into how they acquired the beef and discovered there were four suppliers in Xuzhou city and four others in southern China's Guangdong province.

A hunt-down operation was carried out in March. However, it turned out the case was much bigger than the police had imagined.

There were eight groups involved in selling the illegally imported beef in Lianyungang city alone and the money involved was more than 100 million yuan (US$16.25 million).

A suspect told reporters that he profited 100,000 yuan in one year by doing the business. But a police officer said the figure could be bigger.

The suspects hid the beef in secret and remote locations far from retailers' stalls which made it difficult for the police to collect all the beef, thus prolonging the investigation process, according to Dai Leyu, deputy director of the public security bureau of Guanyun County.

The police in Jiangsu province are still investigating the source of the Brazilian beef and other selling networks.