The details of the case, made public on Friday, immediately entered the pantheon of New York City rat tales. This year, Mayor Eric Adams appointed the city’s first rat czar to confront the long-running rodent problem. Perhaps most famous was Pizza Rat, a large brown rat that went viral after video emerged showing it dragging a large slice of pizza down the stairs to an L line station in Manhattan in 2015. But it was Meat Rats — and several instances of selling misbranded chicken gizzards, pork spareribs and other meat — that put an end to Ya Feng, which ceased operations at the end of 2022. The lawsuit accused the company; its owner and president, Linmin Yang; and the warehouse manager, Kong Ping Ni, of violating the Federal Meat Inspection Act and the Poultry Products Inspection Act.

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Persons: Eric Adams, Ya Feng, Linmin Yang, Kong Ping, Valerie Caproni Organizations: Inspection, Poultry, U.S Locations: New York City, Bronx, Manhattan