Chinese student finds rat head in school lunch

A strange object found in a school meal in China it was a rat’s head, Chinese officials concluded, overturning earlier official assurances that it was a duck’s neck in the latest twist in a food safety scandal that has gripped the country for weeks.

The furor has also exposed deep levels of public distrust of Chinese local governments, whose attempts to cover up negative news have often backfired.

The controversy started on June 1, when a student at Jiangxi Industry Polytechnic College, in the southeastern province of Jiangxi, discovered something strange on his plate in the school canteen.

On a video that he posted on Chinese social media, the student picked up the dark, furry object with his chopsticks and complained to canteen staff that he had found a mouse head.

“That’s duck meat,” replied an employee.

“Aren’t they rat teeth?” the student said, turning the object over to reveal the tiny white pieces in the middle and the shape of a nose above.

“This is duck meat, duck meat,” the official insisted. “How can there be teeth in duck meat?”

The video went viral and caused an uproar in China, where food safety has been a major issue of public concern following scandals involving contaminated baby milk powder and “gutter oil” – recycled oil contaminated with food scraps or even sewage.

Since then, Chinese authorities have tightened regulations and carried out repressions periodicals, but food safety scandals, including in student canteens, continued to make headlines and provoke public protests.

In the latest incident, the video sparked heated discussions online. Many comments were on the student’s side, citing the object’s uncanny resemblance to a rodent’s head, with seemingly identifiable eyes, nose, mouth, and ears.

With public pressure mounting, the college issued a statement on June 3 claiming that the object shown in the video was not a mouse head, but a piece of duck neck, which is a popular delicacy in China.

“Our investigation found that the video was actually filmed in our school canteen, but its content does not correspond to the facts,” the statement said. He said the student invited classmates to look at the object and confirmed it was a duck neck, and provided a written clarification.

The school added that the local district market regulator sent police officers to the canteen to investigate.

On the same day, an official from the district market supervision bureau appeared at the Jiangxi Radio and Television Station, saying officials “repeatedly compared the object and confirmed that it was indeed a piece of duck neck.”

Meanwhile, a student “enlightenment” video circulated online. “I found out it wasn’t a rat’s head but a duck’s neck so I’d like to clarify,” the student said in the video.

CNN has reached out to the school for comment.

‘Calling a horse deer’

The official conclusions and the student’s “enlightenment” failed to convince the public.

Instead, it fueled even more anger online, with users accusing the school and local authorities of lying and pressuring the student to change his ways.

Some called for an investigation into what they believed to be a “cover-up” by local authorities. Others reacted with sarcasm and a wave of memes flooded the Chinese internet.

many shared images with photoshop planting the head of a mouse on the body of a duck (including a Fusion of the Disney characters Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck), claiming it was a newly discovered creature called a “dukrat”.

Others reinvented the Chinese expression “calling a deer a horse,” derived from a famous Qin Dynasty story in which court officials would point to a deer and call it a horse to prove their loyalty to a powerful eunuch.

“In ancient times, ‘we called a deer a horse.’ Now we have to ‘call a mouse a duck,'” said one post on Weibo with nearly 30,000 likes.

In the face of mounting public criticism and ridicule, the Jiangxi government announced on June 10 that it had launched a provincial-level investigation into the incident, with a task force joined by education, public security and market supervisory authorities.

A week later, the provincial investigation team concluded that the foreign object was not a piece of duck neck, and the local market supervision department and school reached a “wrong conclusion” because they did not “diligently” investigate.

Surveillance footage showed the object found by the student was disposed of by canteen staff on June 1, according to provincial staff, who said they checked the canteen’s shopping list, interviewed kitchen staff and students on site.

Animal experts who examined videos and photos of the item concluded that it was the head of a rodent, the team said.

The canteen’s license was revoked and the company that operates it was given a maximum penalty under food safety laws, the statement said. Officials from the college and the local market oversight department will also be punished, he added.

“This is how the government lost its credibility,” said a comment on Weibo.

The controversy has also drawn the ire of the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s spokesman.

On a comment Xiakedao, an account in the foreign edition of the People’s Daily, censured local officials for trying to cover up the truth.

“So many administrative resources were wasted, and the credibility of the local government was damaged, and the loss totally outweighed the gain!” he said.

“This kind of absurd ‘calling a mouse a duck’ incident cannot be repeated again!”