McDonald's Meat Supplier Changed Expiration Dates
REPORT: SOLD MCD'S, KFC, PIZZA HUT ROTTEN MEAT
By Shelley Hazen, Newser Staff
newser.com
Posted Jul 21, 2014 12:32 PM CDT
(NEWSER) – Cue China's next food scare: A Shanghai reporter spent two months in the city’s Husi Food Company plant, which supplies meat to McDonald’s and Yum Brands (which owns Pizza Hut and KFC) in China, and found some pretty disgusting practices including falsifying expiration dates and picking food up off the floor and tossing it in processing machines, the South China Morning Post reports. The report also alleges that management told staff to reprocess and repackage of 10 tons of green and odorous frozen beef with a new expiration date, and that staff hid these practices from McDonald’s inspectors. “Isn't everywhere like this? I'll keep going because wherever I eat, the issues are all the same," a 20-year-old Shanghai student says in response to the revelation—while eating at McDonald's.
The response has been harsh. Chinese regulators shut down Husi and the fast-food chains have stopped orders, report Reuters and Bloomberg. McDonald’s and Yum intend to investigate, but the scandal is a serious hit even in a country that generally trusts foreign companies more than domestic ones, says the Financial Times. The stakes are huge, with 2,000 Golden Arches and 4,400 KFCs in China. And after melamine-laced baby formula, fox meat masquerading as donkey, and antibiotics in chicken, this might be the last straw. "I don't know that this is something an apology can fix so easily, because at this point people don't have a whole lot of trust that they have good systems in place," one expert tells Reuters. |
