On May 13, McDonald's China's official website released a statement on recent media reports. Details are as follows:
Thanks to the media for their oversight. We are actively cooperating with the local market supervision authorities to conduct investigations and verifications. We will not tolerate any violation of the operating standards and will take it seriously.
We apologize for the impact on the restaurants involved. It is our duty to further strengthen the implementation and enforcement of restaurant operating standards, and insist on passing on the correct values to every restaurant and every employee.
Previously reported
On the 13th, the news that "McDonald's replaces the label of expired ingredients to extend their lives" sparked heated discussions among netizens.
According to the Beijing News, recently, the reporter went undercover for McDonald's Zhengzhou Excellent Agricultural Federation Restaurant and McDonald's Jinan University Restaurant, and found that both restaurants had problems such as tampering with food shelf life labels, using expired ingredients, selling food after the expiration date, and cutting corners. McDonald's Zhengzhou Excellent Agricultural Union Restaurant also has the situation that the quality of fried oil exceeds the standard.
▲At 10:40 p.m. on March 6, in the back kitchen of McDonald's Zhengzhou Excellence Agricultural Union Restaurant, the bread used to make McSpicy Chicken Leg Burger had expired. A veteran employee in the back kitchen used scissors to cut off the time bar on the bread packaging bag and posted a new time slip, which was extended from 10 p.m. on March 6 to 2 p.m. on March 7.
▲On March 10, in the thawing area of McDonald's Zhengzhou Excellent Agricultural Union Restaurant, 8 packs of roasted chicken thighs expired at 10 o'clock that night. After expiration, the employee did not discard it according to the regulations, but replaced it with a new time slip to extend the available time.
▲On the evening of April 5, in the McDonald's Jinan University restaurant, the reporter found that two bags of roasted chicken thighs expired that night and needed to be discarded, and the manager on duty at the restaurant asked the reporter to modify the expiration time on the grounds that the time bar was wrong.
McDonald's Zhengzhou Excellent Agricultural Union Restaurant.
This is not the first time that McDonald's has had the problem of relabeling expired ingredients and continuing to use and sell them. According to public information, as early as 2012, CCTV's "3.15" party named McDonald's Beijing Sanlitun restaurant for illegal operations such as refurbishment and resale of expired food; In October 2021, a McDonald's restaurant in Hefei, Anhui Province, was also exposed to problems such as lettuce blackened and still in use, and replacing expired food labels; In March 2022, there were also media reports that a McDonald's store in Nanjing changed the label of expired meat for reuse.
McDonald's entered the Chinese market in 1990 and has more than 5,500 stores in China by the end of 2023. China is currently McDonald's the second largest market in the world. According to McDonald's official disclosure, McDonald's China is moving towards the goal of exceeding 10,000 restaurants by 2028.
Source丨McDonald's official website, Zhongxin Jingwei, Beijing News editor丨Qian Jiayue