I’ve covered food fraud, stealth inflation and related topics rather consistently for the past couple of years. As one might expect, China has been a hot spot for such activity, including the classic example of rat meat being served as lamb on the streets of Shanghai. Well here’s the latest controversy, ice cubes at KFC that are not just dirtier than toilet water, but 13x dirtier. YUM! From Business Week:
Having battered KFC with reports last year that the company sold chicken fattened on illegal drugs, China Central Television now says the ice cubes at a KFC restaurant are dirtier than toilet water. The state-owned broadcaster found that ice in a Beijing outlet had 13 times as much bacteria as water from a toilet bowl and 20 times the national limit. (McDonald’s ice, according to the CCTV report, had less bacteria than toilet water but still didn’t meet national standards.)
Sure, we’re talking about a cup of ice from one of KFC’s 4,429 restaurants in China. But that didn’t stop CCTV’s report this week from spawning global headlines or getting reposted more than 100,000 times over the weekend on Sina Weibo (SINA), China’s largest microblogging site. With Yum Brands planning to open at least 700 new KFC stores across China this year, the fallout raises questions about the depth of the challenge to the Colonel’s reputation.
When CCTV ran an investigative report on Dec. 18 accusing two KFC suppliers of fattening their chickens with illegal hormones, antibiotics, and round-the-clock lighting to trick the birds into eating nonstop, it sparked a government probe that found isolated evidence of amantadine—a drug used to treat Parkinson’s Disease—but didn’t result in fines for Yum. Still, the media attention, combined with growing competition and fears of bird flu, have led to falling sales in KFC’s key market ever since. In its second-quarter earnings report earlier this month, Yum said same-store sales in China would recover from seven straight months of declines in time to post gains in the fourth quarter.
Oh yeah, make that quarter guys! Makes you just want to run out and eat some corporate food doesn’t it.
Full article here.
In Liberty,
Mike
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I remember a similar story being aired about fast food ice machines here in the US. The ice here also tested worse than toilet water. That’s also around the time I stopped putting ice in my drinks when dining out.
Even further back, I remember when a local Dairy Queen was cited in the late 70’s for unsafe levels of coloform in their custard.