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McDonald's Japan franchisee sold stale salads
Wed, Nov 28, 2007 The Straits Times
TOKYO - FOUR McDonald's outlets run by a Tokyo-based franchisee sold outdated salads and possibly also expired yogurt and shakes, giving the fast-food chain a bad name that could scare away hard-won customers, McDonald's Co (Japan) said yesterday. In the latest food safety incident to hit Japan, the US bur- ger giant's Japanese branch said that four of its outlets slapped fake labels on day-old salads. 'This is the first time we have had such a problem since we started business in 1971,' McDonald's Japan's chief executive Eiko Harada told reporters yesterday. The company began operations in Japan in 1971. The restaurants in question, all of them in Tokyo, sold sa-

'But I don't think it's a problem with our franchise business model but a problem with one owner,' he added.

According to Mr Shotaro Shimizu, a McDonald's spokesman, his company will cancel its franchise agreement with Athlete, a Japanese firm that admitted to the mislabelling at at least two of the four outlets.

McDonald's Japan, which will run the four outlets directly from now on, however, said the mislabelling had not endangered its customers' health and there had been no reports of illness caused by the salads.

The company was also investigating suspicions that the restaurants also used yogurt and shake-mix past use-by dates, Mr Shimizu said.

Japanese food companies, including an elite confectionery and the Mister Donut chains, have recently been hit by a series of safety scandals over use of outdated ingredients or falsely labelled products.

In the case of McDonald's, workers changed labels on 12-hour-old salads to make it appear as if they were freshly prepared.

Under McDonald's in-house rules, salads must be disposed of if they are not sold within 12 hours.

The four restaurants first fell under suspicion early this month, and part-time workers at the restaurants subsequently told McDonald's officials they had been changing the labels for unsold salads, said the spokesman.

McDonald's, Japan's biggest fast-food chain, has since conducted investigations at all of its 3,800 or so outlets across the country. McDonald's has expanded rapidly through Japan in part by allowing one-third of its restaurants to be franchisees.

In July, more than 13,500 cartons of milk were removed from McDonald's restaurants in Japan because they could contain bacteria.

The latest scandal could dent sales at McDonald's Japan, which has returned to profit in recent years, in part by luring customers with a super-cheap 100-yen (S$1.35) menu.

ASSOCIATED PRESS, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE