Huge profits to be made as 91% of salt produced in China is industrial

Police in Beijing and Jiangsu Province recently raided a mini-factory in Beijing, which they said was producing 20,000 tons of toxic industrial salt as table salt for seven cities and provinces.

Police arrested 22 people in a four-month operation led by the Ministry of Public Security ending in April, the Xinhua News Agency reported on July 1.

Established in 2008, the eight-square-meter mini-factory in Daxing district, Beijing, produced 20,000 tons of industrial salt worth 20 million yuan ($3 million) in the past seven years, reported the Beijing Times on July 2.

The producer then sold the re-packaged industrial salt as edible salt to wholesalers, the report said.

Hidden in trunks and stored in suitcases, the "fake salt" was sold in Beijing, Tianjin, Jiangsu, Henan, Hebei, Anhui and Shandong, the report added.

Tests conducted by Taizhou authorities showed traces of nitrate, which is used as an additive and preservative in meat products.

The excessive intake of nitrite is considered toxic and 20,000 tons constitutes the annual consumption of Taizhou's 5 million residents, Zhou Lügang, deputy director of Taizhou's Salt Administration Bureau, told The Beijing News on Thursday.

Similar in appearance and taste of table salt, the industrial salt was sold at a discount mainly to remote towns and villages, according to news portal thepaper.cn.

"The profits are huge," said Zhu Jinhua, an official of Taizhou's Public Security Bureau. "The salt they purchased at 400 to 450 yuan per ton can be sold from 800 to 1,000 yuan per ton after labeling it as table salt."

This is not the first time industrial salt was sold as table salt. News website southcn.com reported in July 2002 that a factory in Kunming, China's Southwest Yunan Province did the same thing.

Over 91 percent of salt produced in China annually is industrial salt, and the oversupply of industrial salt can easily flood the table salt market, Xinhua said.

The average salt intake of an urban Chinese resident is 10.3 grams per day, far exceeding the World Health Organization's recommended amount of six grams, according to a 2013 report of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

About three grams of industrial salt could lead to death, according to a notice on the website of the China Food and Drug Administration.

"There are many types of industrial salt with varying levels of nitrite," said Fan Zhihong, a professor at the School of Food Science and Nutritional Engineering of China Agricultural University.

"But a limited amount will not lead to death."

Fan told the Global Times that the disguised salt was mainly sold to food processing factories, not at groceries.