Chefs sent to prison for reusing oil

By Chen Xiaoru Source:Global Times Published: 2013-12-11 22:38:01

Three chefs from a well-known Sichuan restaurant chain have been sentenced to prison for reusing cooking oil from dishes that had already been served, Jing'an district prosecutors said Wednesday.

The three defendants, Xu Ming, Xu Hua and Wu Hong, who all worked for the Xingfu 131 restaurant in Jing'an district, were each charged with the production or sale of harmful food, according to a press release from the Jing'an District People's Prosecutor's Office.

The restaurant's head chef, Xu Ming, was sentenced to two years in prison and fined 2,000 yuan ($329), prosecutors said. His two subordinates were each sentenced to one year in prison and fined 1,000 yuan.

The case was notable because of the chain's popularity. One of its restaurants was featured in the pop star-driven television series Corner with Love in 2007. The chain had opened restaurants in Jing'an, Changning and Huangpu districts until the local government revoked its business license earlier this year.

The chain's problems began when the Jing'an bureau of the Shanghai Food and Drug Administration received a tip in August about possible health violations at the Xingfu 131 restaurant in Jing'an district, prosecutors said.

Health inspectors went to the restaurant and found a suspicious bucket covered with a filter. The inspectors learned that the restaurant's workers used the contraption to filter the oil from the leftover bits of food and grease that they scraped from the plates brought back from the dining room. The chefs then used the filtered oil to cook some of the restaurant's most popular dishes, including a type of spicy roasted fish, prosecutors said.

The restaurant collected about 10 kilograms of filtered oil each day, according to Jing'an District People's Court.

Health inspectors later found that Xingfu 131's two other restaurants engaged in the same practice, prosecutors said.

Although the chefs argued that the practice was part of the restaurant's "secret recipe" for preparing dishes, prosecutors said that reusing cooking oil is a clear violation of food safety law.

The defendants said they were following the instructions of the chain's chief cooking executive, Liu Chunxi, according to the prosecutor's office. Liu will be tried in a separate case.

All of the restaurants were equipped with grease traps as required by local regulations. The municipal government mandated that many restaurants install the devices to prevent used cooking oil from being illegally recycled and resold.

Prosecutors said the restaurants actually had properly disposed of some of their used oil, which helped them hide the illegal practice.

There are few ways to make sure that restaurants are properly disposing of all of their waste oil, said Gu Zhenhua, deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Food Safety Committee Office.

"It is impossible for the government to keep track of all of the oil that restaurants use," Gu told the Global Times. "We largely depend on the restaurants themselves. However, we will severely punish restaurants that use problematic ingredients."



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