McDonald’s and KFC are once again at the middle of a health and safety scare concerning the meat they are selling in their restaurants in China. On Monday, July 21, a Shanghai news channel reported that their food supplier, Husi Food Co., sold them expired beef and chicken, according to USA Today.
Husi allegedly repackaged stale meat and put new expiration dates on the packaging before distributing the meat to McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut. McDonald’s Corp. and Yum Brands Inc., which owns KFC and Pizza Hut, stated that they have stopped using meat from that company in light of these recent allegations.
McDonald’s and Yum both issued apologies in each of their statements, and they will be conducting their own separate investigations. Husi has been ordered to halt operations while authorities investigate.
“If confirmed, the practices outlined in the report are completely unacceptable to Mcdonald’s,” the golden-arches company said, according to LA Times. They went on to say they have “zero tolerance for illegal behavior.”
According to USA Today, KFC is China’s biggest food chain, with over 4,000 restaurants and Yum plans to open an additional 700 restaurants before year’s end. This could hurt the fried-chicken restaurant’s recovery, as they were only just recently rebounding from the health scare of 2012, in which KFC and McDonald’s were found to be adding excessive amounts of antibiotics into their chicken. Yum’s sales in China dropped 40 percent after that scandal, according to LA Times.
Read also: Yum! Reports Second Quarter Losses
“Chinese consumers have been through several [rounds] of food scares and they are getting tired of these problems… It seems like there is a scandal every year and that becomes troublesome,” said John Gordon, founder of Pacific Management Consulting Group in an LA Times article.
China has suffered a slew of food and drug scandals in recent years. In 2008, six infants, as well as countless hospital patients and others were killed by adulterated milk powder and medicines. Wal-Marts in China have also been exposed for injecting fox meat into donkey meat products and for selling expired duck meat.
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