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A woman sells pork at her stall. China has been rocked by a food safety scandal in which rats were being traded as other, more palatable meats. Photo: Reuters

Even for China's scandal-numbed diners, news that the lamb simmering in the pot might actually be rat took the country's endless outrages about food hazards into a new realm of disgust.

In an announcement intended to show that the government was serious about improving food safety, the Ministry of Public Security said on the internet on Thursday that police had caught traders in eastern China who bought rat, fox and mink flesh and sold it as mutton.

Sixty-three people were arrested and accused of ''buying fox, mink and rat and other meat products that had not undergone inspection'', which they doused in gelatin, red pigment and nitrates, and sold as mutton in Shanghai and adjacent Jiangsu province for about $1.6 million, the ministry said.

''How many rats does it take to put together a sheep?'' asked one typically baffled and angry user of Sina Weibo, China's microblogging service. ''Is it cheaper to raise rats than sheep? Or does it just not feel right unless you're making fakes?''

The arrests were part of a nationwide operation since January to ''attack food safety crimes and defend the safety of the dining table'', the ministry said. Police arrested 904 people suspected of selling fake, diseased, toxic or adulterated meat, and broke up 1721 illicit factories, workshops and shops.

New York Times