Chinese diners are known for their ability to eat just about anything. Menu items like stinky tofu, donkey burger and century eggs have broad appeal across China. But when it comes to 40-year-old meat, is there a market?

Gangs of meat smugglers think so. Customs officials across China busted 21 smuggling rings so far this year and seized more than 100,000 tons of smuggled frozen chicken, beef and pork earlier this month, according to the official Xinhua News Agency. Some of the meat dated back to the 1970s and 80s, it said.

Officials found the meat in local wholesale markets, put its value at 3 billion yuan, or $483 million, and arrested 20 people connected to the smuggling operation, Xinhua said.

Some of the meat found was smuggled through Hong Kong to Vietnam and then on to China, Xinhua said. It went on to the central city of Changsha for delivery to other parts of China, such as the southwest province of Sichuan and southern Guangdong province, Xinhua said. Xinhua didn’t elaborate on how the smugglers got the 40-year-old meat or why it hadn’t been sold or eaten after all these decades. What’s clear is that the high demand for meat in China has created an underground market for it. As Chinese people have grown wealthier they have been eating more meat: China is already the world’s largest meat consumer by volume, according to the research arm of Dutch lender Rabobank. But the local supply hasn’t always been big enough to feed the demand. That has created a lucrative market for imports, particularly for proteins like beef. Since China isn’t a large steakholder, the country has started importing and is projected to boost its beef imports by 15% to 20% each year to 2019, Rabobank estimates. Low government support for the industry, a lack of investment in beef production and high labor costs have created a “structural supply deficit” that is causing imports to double and smuggled beef to rise, Rabobank said. The so-called gray market has spurred some meaty scandals in the past, with some sellers passing off rat meat as mutton in 2013. And there have been other incidents involving companies allegedly selling expired meat. Of course, smuggling in China goes far beyond the meat trade. China’s General Administration of Customs publishes countless tales of drug seizures on its website. But meat may be among the most fragrant of customs issues. Xinhua said that one customs official who found the meat, which had been thawed and refrozen many times in transit, almost vomited when finding it. “"It was smelly,” Xinhua quoted him as saying. --Laurie Burkitt. Follow her on Twitter @lburkitt.

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