China’s state-owned China Grain Reserves Corporation, better known as Sinograin, is facing both public outrage and government investigations after a state-run newspaper caught the company transporting cooking oil in uncleaned tankers also used for fuel shipments.
Sinograin is China’s largest grain storage and transportation company. Reporters from the Beijing News followed tanker trucks from Sinograin and a privately-owned corporation called the Hopefull Grain and Oil Group and discovered the trucks were switching between cargoes of fuel and cooking oil without getting cleaned between shipments.
Some of the fuel involved in these unclean shipping procedures was from the China Energy Investment Corporation, which is also a state-run enterprise. The state-run China Daily reported that the fuel included loads of “coal-to-liquids,” a toxic chemical produced during coal processing.
Truck drivers told Beijing News it was an “open secret” among their ranks that tankers carrying toxic liquids, including some industrial chemicals in addition to fuel, were also transporting edibles, like cooking oil and syrup.
Chinese consumers, who have suffered through a long series of food and pharmaceutical safety scandals, were outraged by the report, especially since it involved major brand names and state-owned enterprises. One of the biggest social media firestorms of recent years erupted Saturday.
Sinograin tried a little damage control on Saturday, claiming it was as shocked by the Beijing News report as anyone and would order a full company investigation into truckers who might be violating food safety regulations.
The company’s spin doctoring was in vain. By Monday, Communist Party-controlled media outlets were denouncing company executives as accessories to attempted murder and demanding tough investigations by the central government.
State-run CCTV said the actions of Sinograin and Hopefull were “tantamount to poisoning,” and the public was “confused and stunned” to discover big brands linked to the state would show such “extreme disregard for the life and health of customers.”
China’s powerful State Council, effectively the national cabinet, sought to reassure the public by swiftly assembling a “joint investigation group” with officials from several ministries, including the Food Safety Commission and the Public Safety Bureau.
“Enterprises in violation and relevant responsible persons will be severely punished according to law,” the State Council pledged.
China’s state-run Global Times noted that social media users have uncovered old videos of news reports dating back to 2005 that documented dangerous incidents of food oil transported in the same tankers as chemicals.
The Global Times burbled that swift action by the gigantic Communist government could ensure food safety problems are “nipped in the bud,” but if these unsafe practices have been going on for 20 years or more, the situation would seem to have long ago passed the bud-nipping stage.
All of the companies linked to the scandal have promised to perform internal investigations, and Sinograin appears to have pulled its cooking oil products from some e-commerce platforms, although they remain available on others.
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