Chinese authorities sought to draw a line under one of the country’s largest food safety scandals in years on Sunday, after publishing the results of an official investigation into allegations that large amounts of cooking oil had been contaminated with fuel during transportation.

A report issued by the Food Safety Office under China’s State Council said investigators had confirmed that two truckloads of oil had indeed been exposed to fuel, as media outlet Beijing News claimed in its original story that ignited the scandal in early July.

But the report added that a thorough probe into the cooking oil supply chain had so far found no evidence of a systemic problem with regard to safety standards in the trucking industry.

According to the report, officials have managed to trace all of the roughly 70 tons of contaminated oil transported in the two trucks, which delivered loads to different destinations in northern China in late May.

Authorities managed to seize around half of the oil before it was used; 11 tons were processed to be used in animal feed; and the remaining over 20 tons had already been sold to consumers in northern China’s Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, the report said.

“The incident involving the mixed use of oil tankers to transport edible vegetable oil was extremely egregious, violating basic standards of decency and trampling on moral and legal boundaries,” the report stated. “It constitutes a typical criminal violation that must be severely dealt with.”

The investigation corroborated the main details laid out in Beijing News’ July 2 story, which alleged that two trucks used to transport fuel chemicals had been filled up with loads of cooking oil without first undergoing a mandatory cleaning process.

One of the trucks had hauled fuel from northwestern China’s Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region to the northern Hebei province on May 23, the report confirmed. The next day, the truck was loaded with 35.9 tons of vegetable oil produced by China Grain Reserves Oil and Fat, a subsidiary of the state conglomerate Sinograin. It then transported the oil to Shaanxi province in northwestern China, finishing its journey on May 27.

According to the report, the owner of the truck, surnamed Gao, had managed to cover up the fact the tanker hadn’t been cleaned before taking on a new load — as required by industry standards — by forging receipts from a cleaning company worth around 500 yuan ($70) with the help of Gao’s brother and a contact in the logistics industry.

The driver of the other truck, surnamed Zhang, loaded 31.9 tons of cooking oil from Hopefull Grain and Oil Group in Hebei province on May 21, three days after unloading a shipment of fuel. Zhang claimed the tank had been cleaned on May 20, but police were unable to find any registered cleaning businesses anywhere on the route he had followed.

All the parties involved — including the logistics company, vehicle owner, truck drivers, purchasing enterprises, and oil manufacturers — will face administrative penalties for regulatory violations, the report said.

China Grain Reserves Oil and Fat’s branch in the northern city of Tianjin and Hopefull Grain and Oil Group have already been fined 2.86 million yuan and 2.51 million yuan, respectively, for failing to guarantee the safety of their products.

Both the vehicle owner and two truck drivers will be detained and could face criminal charges. Officials in Xingtai, Hebei province — where three logistics companies implicated in the scandal were based — will also be held accountable for their lax supervision, the report added.

The report added that authorities had carried out a nationwide rectification campaign across the cooking oil supply chain, which did not identify any other cases of trucks being used to transport fuel and cooking oil without being cleaned.

“After inspections conducted in various regions, no similar issues have been found to date,” the report stated.

But this campaign appears to be ongoing, with the report stressing that authorities welcomed tips from the media and general public about possible violations.

“The next step is for the State Council’s Food Safety Office to carry out a special rectification campaign of tankers used to transport edible vegetable oil in a sustained, in-depth manner,” the report stated.

(Header image: VCG)