China's 'rotten meat' scandal firm sacks 340 people at Shanghai plant

[NewWorldRecord]

China's 'rotten meat' scandal firm sacks 340 people at Shanghai plant

PUBLISHED : Monday, 22 September, 2014, 1:43pm
UPDATED : Tuesday, 23 September, 2014, 9:05am

Associated Press in Beijing

OSI Group Chairman and CEO Sheldon Lavin attends a news conference in Shanghai in July in this file image. Photo: Reuters

A US meat supplier said on Monday it is laying off most of the workforce of a Chinese subsidiary accused of selling expired beef and chicken to McDonald’s, KFC and other major restaurant chains.

Shanghai Husi Food has been under investigation since a Shanghai TV station reported in July that it repackaged and sold out-of-date meat. Six employees were arrested in August on suspicion of producing substandard products.

Its owner, OSI Group of Aurora, Illinois, said it will lay off 340 people at the Shanghai unit. It said a small number of employees would be kept on while the investigation is underway. The website of Shanghai Husi says it employs about 500 people.

Employees work at a production line at the Husi Food factory in Shanghai prior to a seizure conducted by food safety officers in July. Photo: Reuters

“Over the past two months, Shanghai Husi has experienced significant financial and customer losses,” said an OSI Group statement. “It is very unlikely that production will be resumed soon.”

The scandal has alarmed Chinese diners and disrupted operations for fast food brands.

Product safety is unusually sensitive in China following scandals over the past decade in which infants, hospital patients and others have been killed or sickened by phony or adulterated milk powder, drugs and other goods.

KFC owner Yum Brands and McDonald’s said they immediately stopped using products from Husi.

Burger King, Starbucks, pizza chain Papa John’s International and Dicos, a chain of sandwich shops, all withdrew products with ingredients from suppliers that dealt with Husi.

OSI has announced plans for a “quality control centre” in Shanghai and said it will spend 10 million yuan (HK$12.6 million) on a food safety education campaign.

The company announced on September 1 it was turning over management of a separate facility in Guangzhou that produces vegetable and fruit products to KanPak China, owned by Golden State Foods of Irvine, California.

A woman holding an ice cream walks out of a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Beijing in July. Photo: Reuters

KFC has broken all ties with OSI Group in China, the United States and Australia.

McDonald’s, which has bought meat from OSI in the United States since the 1950s, complained it felt deceived but has said it will stick with the company, possibly because Chinese food processors cannot match OSI’s scale and technology.

 

[borom]

Not just Foreland we should also get SGX to do something about other potentially vulnerable stocks to scam like Foreland......share price fell very low before all the bad news as though some already knew the scam.

Qingmei,China Sports,Fuxing,Changtian Plastics,China Fibretech to name a few show signs of high risk where the company holds much cash but nothing is done to improve shareholder value.............
have to wake up SGX .......for doing little to protect the shareholders........

........selfish and greedy S-Chip bosses like China Paper,Sino techfiber,Hongwei and many more getting away at the expense of the hard earned money of poor retail investors.............

Nothing heard for more than a year about suspended companies like Sino Techfibre and China Paper. What is SGX doing about it? What kind of protection is SGX giving to retail investors.

How can such scam keep repeating itself.............

SGX should send its own team to China periodically to all the S-Chip companies to make sure the management adopt the best practices. many a time investment of new equipment and buildings are creating channels to inflate costs to siphon the money from the coffers...................

They, Chinamen can do it because SGX is a lame duck...............

http://www.nextinsight.biz/index.php/forum/3-sgx-stocks/13948-Foreland-Fabrictech#20858

Good time to remind all that the PRC's so loved by the pappy not only poison your food but amongst other things also cheat you of your investments.
What is the highest paid ministers in the world doing?