This Video Of Chinese Street Food Made From 'Gutter Oil' Is The Most Disgusting Thing You Will See All Day
The next time you consider eating Chinese street food you might think twice.
The use of gutter oil it turns out is pretty common. This refers to a process of pulling waste oil from sewers, grease traps, waste from slaughterhouses, reprocessing it and then selling it as cooking oil.
This Radio Free Asia (RFA) video via Max Fisher at The Washington Post shows a woman in Shenzhen pulling slop from a gutter which will be processed with other animal fat. The oil eventually make its way to "street vendors and hole-in-the-wall restaurants" that use it as "recycled cooking oil."
Gutter oil is reported to account for one-tenth of cooking oil in China, according to experts cited by RFA. Besides being downright disgusting, the oil is also said to contain carcinogens and other toxins.
China has been fighting the practice for years. Earlier this month a man from China's Jiangsu province was sentenced to life in prison for making and selling gutter oil.
China has long battled food safety concerns. But in a country where cooking oil is at a premium, it will be a long time before they can effectively crackdown on the practice.