Recycled Cooking Oil: Beijing Update 地沟油：北京报告

In March of last year, reports on the widespread sale and use of recycled cooking oil shocked Chinese consumers. By one estimate, almost 1 of 10 meals in China is prepared with recycled oil, and China may consume 2 to 3 million tons of recycled cooking oil per year! Gross…

While periodic reports reach the papers of recycled oil operations found in Chengdu, Wuhan, Guangdong, Jiangxi, Hainan, and Fujian, Suluku looked at the situation in Beijing.

去年三月份，有关销售和使用地沟油的报道铺天盖地般地冲击者中国消费者。一项评估显示，在中国大约每十顿饭中就有一餐是用地沟油烹制的，而全国每年大约消耗二三百万吨的地沟油！这个事实太惹人厌了……

报纸上不时会有文章披露，在成都、武汉、江西、海南和福建等地发现了地沟油的加工窝点。但素绿酷却将视线转回北京。

How do you know it's safe?

An investigation last summer by the Beijing Public Health Bureau inspected 279 roast duck restaurants but found no evidence of using or selling old oil. While it’s reassuring that some types restaurants are safe, we still have no data on other types of restaurants. Restaurant owners in Beijing have reported in the media that they will pay private companies to collect waste oil, and it’s anyone’s guess where that goes.

去年夏天，北京市公共卫生局针对279家烤鸭店展开调查，并没有发现使用或是销售地沟油的迹象。尽管调查结果使人们对某些餐馆感到安心，但是却没有任何证据来保证另外一些餐馆的饮食安全。据报道，北京某些餐馆的经营者会雇佣私营公司收集废弃食油，这让人忍不住猜测这些油会销往何处。

Unfortunately, with no standardized way of testing whether cooking oil is fresh or recycled, the government may be limited in how well it can regulate the problem. Last July the China State Council ordered a crackdown on recycled oil, and required restaurants to keep records of how they discard kitchen waste.  The directive was an opinion issued on behalf of the national government but implementation falls to local governments. Preliminary commentary suggests the rules have been only weakly enforced and are generally ineffective.

不幸的是，目前还没有标准化的方法检测烹调用油是新鲜的还是被多次使用过的。因此中国政府在这个问题的处理上可能能力有限。去年七月，国务院要求重拳整治地沟油，同时要求餐厅对如何处理餐厨垃圾进行记录。这个方针是以中央政府的名义颁布的，但是具体的执行要依赖地方政府。初步评估表明国务院相关文件并没有被有效贯彻执行，而且收效甚微

When we asked Professor Luo Yunbo, 罗云波, who teaches at Beijing Agricultural University, he said he felt reused oil is a serous problem in Beijing.  The oil from the supermarket is generally safe, he said, but small restaurants, especially those that cook Sichuanese and Hunanese dishes traditionally high in oil, may be cause for concern.

我们曾就这个问题咨询过于北京林业大学任教的罗云波教授。罗教授表示，在北京地沟油是一个很严重的问题。一般而言，超市出售的食用油是安全的；小餐馆，特别是那些出售含油量本身就很高的湘菜和川菜的餐馆，更应该引起人们的警惕。

If you’re not sure the oil you bought is safe, Professor (罗云波) recommends the following tests:

Is the oil dark and cloudy looking, and not transparent?

Is there sediment in the oil?

Does the oil congeal at low temperatures?

如果你不确定自己买的油是否安全，罗教授推荐如下检查方法：

油看上去是否颜色较深、浑浊并且不透明？

油中是否存在沉淀物？

油在低温下是否凝固？

If the answer is yes to any of these questions, you should be concerned. However, good-looking oil is still not a guarantee of fresh oil, and it’s very difficult to know if the oil in restaurant dishes is fresh or not.

如果以上任何一个问题的回答是肯定的，那么你就要当心了。但是油看起来很好并不能保证新鲜，要知道饭馆用的油是否新鲜就更难了。

The safest way is likely to avoid the types of restaurants mentioned above, and cook food at home so you can verify the oil source.

也许最安全的办法是避免去上文提到的几种饭馆用餐，选择在家做饭，同时也可以确保食油来源。

What is recycled oil and where does it come from?

什么是地沟油？它来自何方？

Recycled oil is cooking oil that has been used, discarded, reprocessed, and sold again.  Mid-sized Chinese restaurants (think 10-40 rmb dish, 50 tables, 家常菜 restaurants) can go through up to 2 barrels of oil per day. There is no government service that collects recycled oil, so restaurants may pay collectors to haul it away or will sell it to private companies. Illegal processors may then sell the oil back to restaurants.

地沟油是指已经被使用、丢弃、经过再加工后重新出售的食用油。中等规模的中餐馆（假设是家常菜馆，每道菜大约10-40元，有50张桌子）每天要用掉两桶油。目前还没有政府机关收集泔水，因此饭馆通常花钱请人将餐厨垃圾清走或者卖给私营企业。非法加工者再将地沟油回卖给餐厅。

Robert Earley, the Clean Transportation Program Manager at iCET (Innovation Center for Energy and Transportation), an NGO headquartered in Beijing that has studied the potential of waste oils for biodiesel production in China, confirmed this process.

“Generally we see that waste oil collection is one of the few lucrative businesses that is really controlled locally, and ends up being quite corrupt, with waste oil basically going to the highest bidder,” he said.

能源与交通创新中心（iCET, Innovation Center for Energy and Transportation ）是一家总部设在北京的非政府组织，它曾就在中国用废油生产生物柴油是否可行进行评估。Robert Earley ，iCET的清洁交通项目经理，证实了加工过程的可行性。

他说，“通常在我们看来，废油回收是少数几个由地方控制的可以获利的项目，结局也相当的铜臭——废油流向出价最高的人，”

People have also been caught collecting oil from drainage gutters as a source for reprocessed oil. That’s where we got the term 地沟油 di4gou1you2 (gutter oil).

People have taken photos documenting both the collection and processing of gutter oil.

无意中发现某些人从下水道中打捞油腻漂浮物作为地沟油的原料，这是“地沟油”一名的由来。

人们已经拍照记录下地沟油收集和加工的过程。

Why do people use it?

为何使用地沟油？

The allure of the second-hand oil is driven by economics: reprocessed oil can be less than half the price of fresh oil. The entire illegal oil industry is estimated at 1.5-2 billion RMB per year. Depending on its size, restaurants can make between 10,000 – 2 million RMB per year selling oil and kitchen waste to collectors.

二手油之所以吸引人是因为它带来的经济利益：地沟油的价格还不到新鲜油的一半。整个非法食油市场年产值估计高达15-20亿人民币。依据规模，酒楼将泔水和餐厨垃圾卖给收集者每年能够赚到1万到200万人民币不等。

Why is recycled oil dangerous?

地沟油为什么有害？

When vegetable oil is heated repeatedly to high temperatures, it forms a number of toxic by-products. Polyunsaturated fats like soy, canola, sunflower, and corn have been shown to produce carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH), and the toxin 4-hydroxy-trans-2-nonenal (HNE). Before and after cooking, peanut oil may be contaminated with aflatoxin, a powerful carcinogen. As a result, reused oil has been linked to atherosclerosis, inflammatory joint disease, birth defects, digestive track problems, and may be carcinogenic.

植物油经过高温反复加热会产生大量的有毒副产物。大豆、蓖麻、葵花籽以及玉米中含有的多不饱和脂肪会转化为多环芳香烃化合物（PAH）和毒素4-羟基壬烯醛（4-hydroxy-trans-2-nonenal，HNE）。新鲜的还是多次使用的花生油有时候含有黄曲霉毒素，这是一种强致癌剂。因此，地沟油被认为和动脉硬化、关节炎、先天缺陷、消化道疾病等有关，并且可能具有致癌性

What CAN we do with all that oil?

我们能够如何处理地沟油？

Professor Luo said converting waste oil into biofuels or animal feed would be an appropriate way to dispose of it. However, according to Robert Earley, biofuels produced from waste oils have yet to take off in China.

“The quality of waste oil biodiesels in China is typically very low, mostly unsuitable for high performance engines of any sort. The feed stocks are usually high in acid and other impurities, meaning that extra processing is needed in the fuel production phase,” he said.

罗教授认为将地沟油加工为生物燃料或是动物饲料不失为一个好的方法。然而，在Robert Earley看来，用地沟油生产生物燃料尚未在中国真正展开。Robert认为，“在中国，地沟油所生产的生物柴油品质通常不高，无法适合任何一款高性能的发动机。原料中通常含有较多的酸和杂质，这就意味着燃料生产过程中要增加额外的工序。”

He also noted that the lack of government incentives for waste oil biodiesel programs combined with low market prices for diesel means that the waste oil is most likely to end up back in more profitable products such as food, soap, or cosmetics.

他还注意到，用地沟油生产生物柴油这一产业缺乏政府的鼓励措施，外加柴油市场价格低，地沟油更有可能被加工成获利更多的产品，例如食物、肥皂或化妆品。

The European Union has banned the use of used cooking oil in animal feed as toxins may accumulate in the animal and be passed on to meat consumers. China still allows the practice.

欧盟禁止在动物饲料中添加使用过的食用油，因为毒素可能会在动物体内累积，最终传递给肉食消费者。但是中国仍然允许这种做法。

翻译者：徐天铭