Hanoi seizes ‘tiger snacks’ made from Chinese additives

Hanoi police seized 400 cartons of a snack sold under the label of ‘tiger meat’ and a number of Chinese food additives with dubious origins after raiding a facility on Tuesday.

Officers found some 40 employees at the facility, owned by Nguyen Thi Thuy and located inside the Song Cung Industrial Cluster in Dan Phuong District, working on production without wearing adequate uniforms as required.

A number of Chinese-made coloring, flavoring, and dough without adequate receipts and papers were also found in the snack-making area, police said.

Thuy confessed to police that her facility makes the ‘tiger meat’ snack “under a recipe of some Chinese experts.”

All of the additives are brought from China and undergo no quality or hygiene tests, Thuy said, while admitting that the facility can produce nearly 100 kilograms of the snack per day.

The ‘tiger meat’ is not only on sale in Hanoi, but has also been distributed to the Central Highlands and the south.

Samples of the snack in these localities will be collected for tests, officers said.

Dubious snack

The ‘tiger meat’ snack emerged and quickly become a best-seller in November 2012, even though neither traders nor consumers know what it is actually made of.

A typical pack bears packaging with a picture of a tiger along with many lines of Chinese characters, the three largest of which mean “Dried Tiger Meat”. There is also an ISO mark and a logo on the packaging, along with many other details.

Inside each pack are roughly ten pieces of dried “meat” the size of the first knuckle of the thumb. The meat is dark brown in color and soaked with spices. The product is rather sticky and smells unpleasant. When eaten, the meat is tough and tastes both salty and sweet.

Chinese cheapies and products of unknown origins have flooded Vietnam, and market watchdog agencies have recently unearthed a number of cases.

Ho Chi Minh City-based Van Gia Hao Co Ltd, for instance, was discovered flouting a number of trading and advertising regulations following a raid by the city’s market watchdog agency on Friday.

At the company’s headquarters and warehouse in District 8, officers seized 400 mini massage machines branded Body Pro and other products, which are sold at prices as much as 40 times higher than they should be.

Also earlier this month, Hanoi-based Sen Hong Bich restaurant was caught sourcing dubious beef from China that it was selling as American steak.