H?agen-Dazs, the leading ice cream brand,
apologized for a workshop in Shenzhen City that did not
have a valid sanitation permit after the operation was judged
unsanitary last week, according to Beijing News on
Sunday.
"We'd like to apologize to consumers for what
happened in our Shenzhen company. We'll improve management and go
on offering consumers fine-quality products and services," Zhu Xi,
general manager of H?agen-Dazs China, was quoted as saying.
??
The US company's branch in Shenzhen, in the
southern province of Guangdong, was found last Thursday to use a
workshop in a residential apartment to make products that were sold
in all five franchised stores in the city.
Today’s China Daily reported that a private
citizen had originally reported the operation to the local quality
supervision bureau believing that it was violating the US food
giant’s brand name.
On inspection, it was discovered that the workshop
was an official H?agen-Dazs operation, but that sanitary conditions
were substandard and a permit held by staff was for a different
location.
Local industrial and commercial administration
officials said it was hard to guarantee the quality of food from
the three-room workshop, where a toilet was adjacent to a food
processing area and a trash can beside cooking facilities.
"We would not issue a permit under such production
conditions," said an official named Yu from the sanitation
supervision bureau of Luohu District, where the operation was
located.
???
All food produced in the workshop was disposed of
and the place sealed up by the bureau, and the company said
customers who had bought the affected products could get a
refund.
???
Zhu blamed the incident on the "negligence of
management" as they thought that their sanitation permit could be
used at the workshop.
???
H?agen-Dazs was established in the US in the early
1920s and entered the Chinese mainland market in 1996, where it now
has 48 branches.
(Xinhua News Agency June 20, 2005)