Sale of Fox and Raccoon Meat as Beef, Lamb, and Rabbit Banned, Sold in Various Parts of China.

Foxes, raccoons, and minks, among other fur animals, are classified as non-edible special livestock, and their bodies are prohibited from entering the food industry. However, an undercover investigation by media reporters has found that some unscrupulous vendors are privately selling uninspected fox and raccoon meat, and even passing them off as beef or lamb meat for public sale on online platforms, posing a serious threat to food safety and drawing attention.

According to reports by The Paper, the fox and raccoon breeding industry has already formed a considerable industrial scale in areas such as Tangshan in Hebei, Weifang in Shandong, and Linyi. Fur is the primary commercial value. After “skinning,” the bodies of foxes and raccoons are not allowed to enter the food industry as per regulations. However, reporters discovered during undercover visits in major fox and raccoon breeding markets in Tangshan and Weifang that some breeders and middlemen are still illegally selling these bodies for human consumption, and some even openly sell them on video platforms.

On February 26, a raccoon meat vendor named Liu Meng in Leting County, Tangshan City, posted a video on a certain online platform saying that it is currently the off-season, selling around thirty to fifty raccoons every day, “I basically sold all the stock I have for the day.”

Liu Meng explained that he often sells raccoon meat to farmhouses, restaurants, and other places. Customers who buy raccoon meat use it to pass off as lamb, dog, or badger meat, “whatever they want.” In Leting County, there are also many braised meat shops that sell raccoon meat.

In a freezer near Fanggezhuang Village, there are even more than twenty tons of raccoon legs already cut up. The owner revealed that he had once cut out the loins of foxes and raccoons and sold them to a certain province, where customers used them to make beef jerky. Some also purchased several tons of raccoon white strips from him, removed the heads, and sold them online as fresh rabbit meat.

However, experts point out that animals like foxes and raccoons are raised using hormones, and in the absence of quarantine procedures, the entry of uninspected fur animal bodies into the meat market will carry pathogens that can affect human health, increase the risk of zoonotic disease transmission.