The recent widely publicized report of meat buns with cardboard fillings is a hoax and the TV scenario maker has been detained by the police, the Beijing TV Station has said.
The TV station apologized in a footage Wednesday evening for airing the staged report produced with a home DV by a temporary employee surnamed Zi on its Life Channel.
In the announcement, Beijing TV Station said airing of the so-called problematic meat buns with a column known as "Transparency" on July 8 had sparked off grave concern in the society.
Workers from the municipal departments of industry and commerce, and food safety immediately carried out a thorough inspection on breakfast stands across the city.
Local police began to step in for investigation after the municipal industrial, commercial and food safety watchdog failed to find any of the problematic meat buns mentioned in the investigative TV report.
Through investigation, the police discovered Zi, a temporary employee of the Transparency column, using a pseudo name of Hu Yue, twice went to the No.13 courtyard inside Shizikou Village, Taiyanggong Township of Chaoyang District, and asked four migrant workers who had been preparing breakfast there to make meat buns for him under the excuse of buying more breakfast for other migrant workers at a construction site, according to the TV announcement.
Zi brought in pork, flour and cardboards he bought from the open market and instructed the breakfast makers to make "baozi" or meat buns using meat fillings produced from pork mixed with crushed cardboard. He used a home DV to film the entire process, turned in after some editing, and used trickish means to get his work aired.
The television station said in the announcement the Life Channel had failed to strictly examine the content of the report, resulting in the airing of a faked report which had in turn produced a bad influence in the society, and should therefore apologize to the general public. Source: Xinhua
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