A court in east China's Zhejiang Province sentenced 10 people to prison terms ranging from 16 months to 15 years on Thursday for selling pork as beef porky.
The Wenzhou Intermediate People's Court gave a man surnamed Fang 15 years in prison and fined him 4 million yuan (618,800 U.S. dollars) for his role in the scam.
According to the indictment, Fang asked a man surnamed Zhu, who ran a meat processing plant in Wenzhou with his wife, to manufacture the fake jerky for him in March 2013.
They added beef powders, caramel pigment and other additives to pork.
Zhu and his wife rented three rooms in a remote village to secretly produce the fake jerky from June 2014 to January 2015, churning out between 250 to 500 kg of their product every day. Zhu's daughter and son-in-law and some other family members also participated in the production.
Zhu sold the fake beef jerky to Fang who asked a person surnamed Zheng to pack and sell it to many other provinces, the court said.
Zhu was sentenced to 15 years in jail and fined 1.5 million yuan. The other eight defendants were sentenced to imprisonment ranging from 16 months to 10 years.
