A journalistic investigation by the Chinese newspaper The Paper revealed the widespread commercialization of “fake meats”, such as fox or raccoon meat being sold as beef, mutton, or rabbit to restaurants.

The Paper reports that in Chinese areas known for fur production, such as Tangshan, Hebei, Weifang, Linyi, or Shandong, animal farms resell fox and raccoon ‘white strips’ (carcasses with the internal organs and subcutaneous fat removed) all over the country, passing them off as beef, mutton or rabbit. Some vendors even go through the trouble of braising and grilling their fake meats before freezing them and selling them to restaurants to make them even harder to tell apart from meats meant for human consumption. Experts warn that the hormones and medicines used in the breeding of animals for fur, but also the pathogens they carry make these meats extremely dangerous.

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Selling the carcasses of animals bred for fur in unhygienic conditions is prohibited by Chinese law, but a recent journalistic investigation found that many animal farms around the country sell these meats either to private buyers or openly, on online platforms. One seller told undercover reporters that his white strips weighed 3 to 3.5 kilograms and sold for around 20 yuan ($2.80), while another said that some customers bought fox and raccoon tenderloins to make beef jerky, while others sold them as rabbit meat.

Panjia Lake Village, in Shandong Province, is notorious for selling fox meat as edible meat. One villager involved in the commercialization of illegal meat told The Paper that he and others in the business use chemical “meat essence” to transform fox meat into whatever the client desires. “Nowadays, there is beef essence for beef meat, mutton essence for mutton, donkey meat essence for donkey, adding it changes the taste completely and you can’t tell the difference anymore,” the man said.

The report indicated that the largest amounts of fake meat are sold in the months of November and December of each year when the fur is usually harvested. Some sellers freeze the meat or choose to process it into animal food or oil.