Tag Archives: China

Always after an outbreak instead of before: McDonald’s to increase oversight of Chinese suppliers

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McDonald’s said it would monitor its suppliers in China more closely after a food safety scandal in the country hurt the chain’s sales and reputation.

mcdonalds.chinaThe company plans to increase audits and video monitoring at its suppliers and send more employees to meat production facilities to ensure its food is prepared safely. It also named a new food safety officer and created a hotline where employees can report poor food safety practices, McDonald’s said in a statement on Tuesday.

The changes come after a TV report in July showed workers at the McDonald’s supplier Shanghai Husi Food Company repacking meat past its expiration date. McDonald’s stopped using the Shanghai plant and many restaurants were unable to provide some products, including Big Macs and Chicken McNuggets.

McDonald’s, based in Oak Brook, Ill., reported a 7.3 percent drop in July sales at its restaurants in Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Other fast-food companies have been hurt by food safety concerns in China. Husi, owned by OSI Group, based in Aurora, Ill., was also accused of selling old meat to KFC. KFC also stopped using meat from the plant.

China arrests six from OSI unit in food scandal

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Chinese authorities have formally arrested six employees from a unit of US food supplier OSI Group, the parent company over a scandal involving expired meat sold to fast food giants.

transparency-300x199Authorities have previously announced the detention by police of six officials of Shanghai Husi Food Co, a subsidiary of OSI which operated a factory shut down by the city in July for mixing out-of-date meat with fresh products. OSI’s clients in China previously included McDonald’s and KFC.

“OSI Group confirms that 6 employees of Shanghai Husi have now been arrested following detention by authorities,” the company said in a statement provided to media. “OSI Group will continue to cooperate fully and in good faith with the authorities,” it said, but did not identify the six. 

Mars to set up food safety center in China

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Mars Inc, whose brands include M&M and Dove, is building a global food safety center in China to help further expand knowledge and understanding of effective global food safety management.

mars.incScheduled to open in the summer of 2015 in Huairou, a suburb of Beijing, the $15 million center will be the first of its kind for Mars and one of the first facilities of its kind for the region and the industry, with the purpose of conducting non-profit food safety research and training.

“We are developing this center to focus on horizon scanning, researching new threats, developing new methods, and building capability through education and training,” according to Mars.

The goals are to develop enabling science that can be translated into more robust and cost effective food safety and quality systems, to drive continuous improvement throughout the Mars supply networks.

The center also aims to develop an external global network of universities and research institutions to enhance their ability to adapt to new challenges and opportunities, as well as to provide laboratory and technical facilities to regulators and researchers.

The center will be open to internal and external audiences to enable networking and to support standard development and contribute where appropriate to government food safety systems.

Wu Heng on throwing China’s food out the window

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“I hope this book will make you feel that it’s time to throw unsafe food out the window.”

Wu HengSo writes Wu Heng, the founder of Throw it Out the Window (www.zccw.info), a website staffed by volunteers that documents China’s rampant food safety problem and tallies incidents of unsafe food — 3,449 since 2004. In July, Mr. Wu, 28, a former history student and now a journalist who lives in Shanghai, published a book by the same title aiming to raise awareness of a problem he says is fueled by greed, ignorance and corruption, and to support consumer rights.

The book’s table of contents vividly illustrates the problem. Resembling a periodic table of elements, it points the reader to chapters dealing with an unsafe food, a chemical or a policy problem. They include melamine milk and leather milk, fake beef and fake lamb, malachite fish and heavy metal fish, garbage pigs, gutter oil, bleach mushrooms and sulfuric acid lychees, institutional overlaps, policy gaps and special interests.

Finally, it shows Mr. Wu’s prescription for how people can protect themselves, to a certain degree. He calls this the “Three RPs Principle”: Right Price, Right Place and Rotate Poisons. 

Be open: McDonald’s, Yum release supplier data after China food safety issues

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Five fast food chains including McDonald’s and Yum Brands Inc  have published details of their suppliers on their Chinese websites, following a request from Shanghai authorities after the latest food safety scare.

transparencyShanghai’s Municipal Food and Drug Administration said on Saturday that it had asked the two chains, along with Burger King, Dicos and Carl’s Jr, to publish the usually closely-guarded information as part of efforts to strengthen oversight of food suppliers. 

China farms push puts safety first

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A giant Chinese meat importer has put food safety and quality at the top of its shopping list as it invests tens of millions of dollars in the Western Australia livestock industry.

amy_s_lamb_aug_12(1)Grand Farm president Chen Xibin said there was huge potential to build on WA’s reputation for producing safe food using modern farming methods and high standards in processing.

Brad Thompson of The West Australian reports that Grand Farm has started eyeing farms in WA as part of its history-making deal with South West meat processor V&V Walsh to secure huge volumes of quality lamb and beef.

Mr Chen arrived in WA late last week for meetings as part of the deal that will see V&V Walsh process an extra 500,000 lambs and 30,000 cattle a year.

Grand Farm, China’s biggest importer of red meat from Australia and New Zealand, is investing $1 billion in boosting supply and processing capacity with the backing of authorities in Inner Mongolia. Mr Chen said the company was considering all options for increasing supply out of WA, including buying farms, developing feedlots and live exports.

Food safety inspections and audits are never enough, in China and elsewhere

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When inspectors visited Shanghai Husi Food Co Ltd earlier this summer, the production line at the plant now at the centre of an international food scandal appeared in good order, with fresh meat being handled by properly-attired workers and supervisors keeping a watchful eye over the process.

audit.checklistHowever, if they had arrived unannounced a day before, they would have found piles of blue plastic bags filled with out-of-date meat stacked around the factory floor, a worker at the facility told Reuters, adding the old meat was often added back into the mix to boost production and cut costs.

“The next day, that meat just disappeared – someone must have disposed of it. The manager said it was an inspection,” said the worker, who wasn’t authorised to talk to the media and so didn’t want to be named.

On July 20, following an undercover local TV report that alleged workers used expired meat and doctored food production dates, regulators closed the factory, which is part of OSI Group LLC, a U.S. food supplier. Police have detained five people including Shanghai Husi’s head and quality manager.

The scandal – which has hit mainly big foreign fast-food brands including McDonald’s Corp and Yum Brands Inc, which owns the KFC and Pizza Hut chains – underlines the challenges facing inspectors in China’s fast-growing and sprawling food industry. China is Yum’s biggest market and McDonald’s third largest by outlets.

Behind the thousands of brightly-lit restaurants offering what Chinese consumers see as better quality food lie supply chains that rely on an army of poorly regulated and inadequately audited processing plants. Yum has around 650 suppliers in China alone.

China’s government has struggled to restore confidence in its $1 trillion food processing industry since six infants died in 2008 after drinking adulterated milk. The head of China’s Food and Drug Administration told the China Daily this week that the food safety situation “remains severe” and the existing oversight system “is not effective.”

Why China still sucks at food safety

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Michael Moss and Neil Gough write in the New York Times that China has been scrambling to right its gargantuan processed-food ship ever since six infants died and thousands more were hospitalized with kidney damage in 2008 from milk adulterated with an industrial chemical.

schaffnerBut as the latest scandal involving spoiled meat in fast-food shows, the attempted transformation over the last six years has run up against the country’s centuries-old and sprawling food supply chain.

From factory inspections to product recalls, laboratory testing to prosecutions, China’s emergent food-quality apparatus has turned into reform on the fly, with ever-changing threats and setbacks. Now, the growing presence of big American brands means that the country’s oversight efforts — and its most glaring lapses — are playing out on a global stage.

Friend of the barblog Don Schaffner (right, pretty much as shown) a professor of food microbiology at Rutgers University and president of the International Association for Food Protection, said, “The way I keep explaining China to people is that it’s kind of like the U.S. in the time of Upton Sinclair and ‘The Jungle,’ ” referring to the 1906 novel that described unsanitary conditions in the meatpacking industry and inspired reform. “There is tremendous desire by the Chinese to get it right, but they have a long way to go.”

The meat episode that started garnering widespread attention on Sunday ensnared a roster of American fast-food giants. It stemmed from a hidden-camera broadcast by Shanghai-based Dragon TV showing processing plant workers using out-of-date chicken and beef to make burger patties and chicken products. Meat that had dropped onto the floor was scooped up and tossed back into the processing machine, the news report showed.

Government investigators have since found that workers at the plant, Shanghai Husi Food, used expired or rotten meat to make Chicken McNuggets, beef patties and other food products totaling more than 5,000 boxes, the official news agency Xinhua reported. One hundred tons of meat products were seized, and on Wednesday police detained five people as part of their inquiry. The factory supplied McDonald’s, KFC and other fast-food restaurants in China, and is a subsidiary of the OSI Group, based in Aurora, Ill.

Along with McDonald’s and KFC, the restaurants that have stopped obtaining supplies from Shanghai Husi include Burger King, Starbucks and the Papa John’s pizza chain. The factory had customers in Japan as well, including McDonald’s Holdings Japan, which said it had sourced about a fifth of its Chicken McNuggets from Shanghai Husi and stopped selling the product on Monday.

schaffner.facebook.apr.14“Company management was appalled by the report and is dealing with the issue directly and quickly” through internal inquiry and cooperation with government investigators, OSI said in a statement. A company spokeswoman declined to answer questions.

The varied and often-stomach-turning episodes in China, along with the growing number of American food companies operating there, have made it a focus of world attention and expert support in the efforts to build its food-quality protections. Events like the government-sponsored China International Food Safety and Quality Conference, which began eight years ago, have been drawing top American experts, from regulators to litigators, who say the challenge China faces is staggering.

“Although China is by outward appearance an incredibly modern and vibrant society, it just doesn’t have a long history of regulatory control, of checks and balances, where somebody is making the decision, ‘If the meat falls on the floor, should I put it back in?’ ” said Bill Marler, a Seattle-based consumer lawyer who has attended the food safety conferences.

Mr. Marler, a leading filer of food-borne illness lawsuits in the United States, cites the lack of a vigorous civil torts system in China as a major hindrance to its food-safety overhaul, arguing that big-dollar cases cause companies to change their ways. But the failings in China’s system range widely, observers said, and persist despite the 2009 update of its Food Hygiene Act with the far-more vigorous Food Safety Law.

There may prove to be a benefit as more American food companies enter the Chinese market. While they are raising public alarm about episodes like this week’s meat scandal, they may also come bearing the expertise to help set things right, Professor Schaffner said.

“They’re not perfect,” he said. “But when companies like McDonald’s and Yum Brands come in, they are bringing high food-safety standards to China, which is good for Chinese suppliers.”

Faith-based food safety has to go after audit deception in China: McDonald’s CEO can do better

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Not surprisingly, the China meat scandal has widened.

audit.checklist-241x300McDonald’s Corp feels “a bit deceived” by the audit it received for Shanghai Husi Food Co Ltd, a China supplier that was shut down this week after a TV report showed workers mishandling meat, Chief Executive Don Thompson said on Tuesday.

“We are no longer serving product from the primary facility there that has the challenges and the issues,” Thompson said on a conference call after McDonald’s reported lower-than-expected quarterly earnings.

But why would a huge brand rely an audit?

The Shanghai Food and Drug Administration on Sunday halted operations of Shanghai Husi following a Dragon TV report that showed workers picking up meat from a factory floor, as well as mixing fresh meat with meat beyond its expiration date.

The scandal also has ensnared other Shanghai Husi customers, including KFC parent Yum Brands Inc and Burger King Worldwide Inc.

Many U.S. restaurant operators and retailers rely on third-party auditors to check whether their suppliers comply with food safety rules and other regulations. It is not uncommon for suppliers at the center of food safety scandals to have received high marks on their audits.

 We wrote, and repeated here, it’s time to change the discussion and the approach to safe food. Time to lose the religion: audits and inspections are never enough.

• Food safety audits and inspections are a key component of the nation’s food safety system and their use will expand in the future, for both domestic and imported foodstuffs, but recent failures can be emotionally, physically and financially devastating to the victims and the businesses involved;

• many outbreaks involve firms that have had their food production systems verified and received acceptable ratings from food safety auditors or government inspectors;

• while inspectors and auditors play an active role in overseeing compliance, the burden for food safety lies primarily with food producers;

• there are lots of limitations with audits and inspections, just like with restaurants inspections, but with an estimated 48 million sick each year in the U.S., the question should be, how best to improve food safety?

• audit reports are only useful if the purchaser or  food producer reviews the results, understands the risks addressed by the standards and makes risk-reduction decisions based on the results;

• there appears to be a disconnect between what auditors provide (a snapshot) and what buyers believe they are doing (a full verification or certification of product and process);

• third-party audits are only one performance indicator and need to be supplemented with microbial testing, second-party audits of suppliers and the in-house capacity to meaningfully assess the results of audits and inspections;

• companies who blame the auditor or inspector for outbreaks of foodborne illness should also blame themselves;

• assessing food-handling practices of staff through internal observations, externally-led evaluations, and audit and inspection results can provide indicators of a food safety culture; and,

• the use of audits to help create, improve, and maintain a genuine food safety culture holds the most promise in preventing foodborne illness and safeguarding public health.

Audits and inspections are never enough: A critique to enhance food safety

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Food Control

D.A. Powell, S. Erdozain, C. Dodd, R. Costa, K. Morley, B.J. Chapman

Internal and external food safety audits are conducted to assess the safety and quality of food including on-farm production, manufacturing practices, sanitation, and hygiene. Some auditors are direct stakeholders that are employed by food establishments to conduct internal audits, while other auditors may represent the interests of a second-party purchaser or a third-party auditing agency. Some buyers conduct their own audits or additional testing, while some buyers trust the results of third-party audits or inspections. Third-party auditors, however, use various food safety audit standards and most do not have a vested interest in the products being sold. Audits are conducted under a proprietary standard, while food safety inspections are generally conducted within a legal framework. There have been many foodborne illness outbreaks linked to food processors that have passed third-party audits and inspections, raising questions about the utility of both. Supporters argue third-party audits are a way to ensure food safety in an era of dwindling economic resources. Critics contend that while external audits and inspections can be a valuable tool to help ensure safe food, such activities represent only a snapshot in time. This paper identifies limitations of food safety inspections and audits and provides recommendations for strengthening the system, based on developing a strong food safety culture, including risk-based verification steps, throughout the food safety system.

 

Wal-Mart triples spending on food safety in China

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Wal-Mart Stores Inc. said Tuesday it will triple its spending on food safety in China by the end of 2015 after criticism of its operating procedures and a reported mislabeling of donkey meat.

walmart_groceriesThe world’s largest retailer said it will shell out $48.2 million on food safety between 2013 and 2015. That’s nearly three times the $16.1 million it had previously earmarked.

The extra spending will go toward food testing, permits, DNA testing of meat sold in China and supplier audits, said Paul Gallemore, Wal-Mart’s chief compliance officer in China.

The intensified DNA testing comes after fox meat was found throughout various Chinese stores in packages labeled as “Five Spice” donkey meat in January. The company also was fined for selling expired duck meat in 2011.

Wal-Mart has about 7,000 food suppliers in China but recently cut 4% for failing to pass various food safety tests or audits.