A company in northern Vietnam has been found passing off dried pork as buffalo meat, mobilizing a village for its production and using false labels to trick customers.
Police in Phu Tho Province are questioning Vu Thi Huong, 32, for producing and selling fake food and using local villagers for her criminal activity.
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Dried buffalo meat distributed by MQ Food. Photo courtesy of the company |
Preliminary investigation found that her company, MQ Food, was producing and distributing hundreds of tons of low-quality dried buffalo meat, mostly made from pork, earning hundreds of billions of dong (VND100 billion = US$3.8 million).
But its product packaging claims it is “100% fresh and unmixed meat.”
During a raid on the company, authorities seized more than 30 tons of various types of raw meats, including pork and buffalo, a ton of frozen fresh sausages, three tons of dried buffalo meat, and 3.4 tons of dried pork.
Pork is cheaper than buffalo in Vietnam.
Several thousand tons of buffalo meat of unknown quality were sourced from India and sold as buffalo meat from the mountainous province of Ha Giang.
Ha Giang is known for high-quality organic foods produced on a small scale by ethnic minorities.
The villagers making the fake foods shut down all their business when the police showed up.
