Police detain employees of suspect meat seller

BEIJING — Five employees of a company accused of selling expired beef and chicken to McDonald’s, KFC and other restaurants were detained by police yesterday. China’s food safety agency said on its website that its investigators found unspecified illegal activity by Husi Food Co, but gave no confirmation expired meat had been found or other details.

Some of the illegal conduct was an “arrangement organised by the company”, the deputy director of the agency’s Shanghai bureau, Mr Gu Zhenghua, told the official Xinhua news agency.

Those in criminal detention include the head of the company and its quality manager, the Shanghai police department said on its microblog account. The one-sentence statement gave no details of possible charges or the employees’ identities.

The scandal surrounding Husi, a unit of the Aurora, Illinois-based OSI Group, has alarmed Chinese diners and disrupted operations for fast food chains. It erupted on Sunday when a Shanghai broadcaster, Dragon TV, reported that Husi repackaged old beef and chicken and put new expiration dates on them. It said they were sold to McDonald’s, KFC and Pizza Hut restaurants.

Xinhua said the manager of Husi’s quality department, Mr Zhang Hui, told investigators “such meat had been produced under tacit approval of the company’s senior managers”.

It said the company “has been conducting the malpractice for years”.

Restaurant operators that have withdrawn products made with meat from Husi include McDonald’s Corp, KFC owner Yum Brands, pizza chain Papa John’s International, Starbucks Corp, Burger King Corp and Dicos, a Taiwanese-owned sandwich shop chain.

The scare has also spread to Japan, where McDonald’s said 20 per cent of the meat for its chicken nuggets was supplied by Husi. The Tokyo-based convenience store operator FamilyMart released a statement on Tuesday saying it had halted sales of chicken nuggets made from Shanghai Husi products. Yesterday, the government said Japan had suspended food imports from Husi.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said Japanese authorities would strengthen safety checks on food entering the country, even though it had not received any reports of illness resulting from the products made by Husi.

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.

Husi said in a statement earlier this week it was “appalled by the report’’ and believed it to be an “isolated event.’’ It promised to cooperate with the investigation and to share the results with the public.

In a separate statement, the Shanghai food watchdog said it sealed more than 1,000 tonnes of suspected meat products from OSI in China, and a further 100 tonnes of products from a range of its customers. AGENCIES