1st LD-Writethru-China Focus: Chinese court punishes fast food supplier, executives

A Shanghai court on Monday ordered two food processing plants of a major fast food chain supplier to pay fines and sentenced 10 people to prison terms for producing and selling substandard products in a case exposed in 2014.

The Shanghai and Hebei branches of Husi Food Co. were each ordered to pay 1.2 million yuan (about 18,240 U.S. dollars) in fines for using recycled meat.

Husi is a subsidiary of the U.S.-based global food processor OSI Group and a former supplier to major fastfood chains including McDonald's and Yum! Brands KFC and Pizza Hut.

Yang Liqun, an OSI China executive in charge of the deep processing division and an Australian citizen, was sentenced to three years in prison and 100,000 yuan. She also faces deportation.

The court handed down prison terms of up to two-years-and-eight-months to another nine people and fined them between 30,000 and 80,000 yuan. Four were given suspended sentances.

The case was first exposed after a local TV station reported in July 2014 that Shanghai Husi had supplied products tainted with reprocessed, expired meat to a string of fastfood chains and restaurants across China

Following the report, six senior executives were arrested, and the group has stopped all operations at Shanghai Husi.

RECYCLED MEAT

Court documents show that in May and June 2013, Yum! Brands returned products produced by Husi's Shanghai and Hebei branches, as they did not meet Yum! standards.

The company then decided to use the returned and expired products to produce other foods.

Internal communications, including emails, showed that the decision to add recycled and expired meat to new products was done with the consent of senior executives.

The recycled meat was used in meat patties, as well as other chicken and beef products, court documents show.

The court ruled that Yang Liqun had given the directive to Husi's Shanghai and Hebei plants to use recycled and expired products.

Law enforcement officials told Xinhua that, upon hearing of the investigation, senior executives and people holding key positions at Husi deleted emails that implicated them in the malpractice.

PUNISHABLE PRODUCTION

The Food Safety Law forbids the use of recycled and expired ingredients in food products.

During the trial, the defendants argued that the products returned by Yum! were not recycled foods and the dates on the packaging were a guide for clients, not use by dates.

The court, however, said that these products were recycled as defined in law and the expiration dates, once set, cannot be changed.

Xu Wei, presiding judge, told Xinhua that the two Husi branches and ten defendants should be held responsible as they broke the Food Safety Law. Endit