The recycling price of expired mooncakes is 800 yuan per ton, and the five-nut mooncakes are turned into fragrant pastries. The feed factory purchases and processes them into pig, cattle and sheep feed, and promises not to re-enter the market for sale.

The shelf life of mooncakes is usually around 30 to 90 days. Where will the expired mooncakes go? In addition to destruction, expired mooncakes can also be used as feed.

For those mooncakes that have expired, the relevant departments will uniformly recycle them in accordance with relevant systems and carry out destruction measures such as dyeing and deformation to ensure that no expired mooncakes are sold again on the market. It also ensures that production companies will not use recycled mooncakes as raw materials for re-processing and production.

There are also some remaining mooncakes that may be sold to related companies to be made into animal feed. Some feed factories will process mooncakes and add them as raw materials to animal feed.

A staff member of a feed factory in Hebei Province told reporters that the feed factory recycles impending and expired food stocks all year round, including biscuits, moon cakes, etc., for use as feed raw materials, and promises not to re-enter the market for sale. The staff member said that mooncakes used as feed should not deteriorate such as mold or odor.

“You cannot directly crush them and feed them to pigs. Mooncakes are very oily. If pigs eat them directly, they will have diarrhea and the pork will become muttony.” According to a staff member of a feed factory in Heilongjiang, his feed factory will purchase expired mooncakes from food factories as feed raw materials. The purchased mooncakes will be further processed and blended into animal feed. “You can make feed for pigs, cattle and sheep, just blend it.”