McDonald’s supplier trial concludes in Shanghai

A Shanghai court concluded a trial of OSI Group LLC, the U.S. meat supplier that sells to McDonald’s Corp. but got ditched by Yum! Brands Inc. in China for allegedly selling out-of-date products, according to a court official.
No schedule for a verdict on the case has been announced and the information will be published on the court’s website, according to an official from Shanghai Jiading district court surnamed Yang, who wouldn’t give her full name.
Shanghai and Hebei Husi Foods Ltd., along with 10 employees, had been charged by prosecutors in September, according to a statement posted on a Shanghai government website.
The trial comes more than a year after a Chinese TV channel report that alleged Husi workers were repackaging and selling expired chicken and beef. The ensuing fall-out prompted China and Japan-based fast-food chains from Yum-owned KFC to McDonald’s to halt supplies from OSI and pull products from menus, hurting earnings.
Ding Ying, a Shanghai-based spokeswoman at OSI, declined to comment.
Yum, which gets more than half of its revenue from China, has been struggling to recover from the OSI scandal in the country and an avian-flu outbreak while trying to combat a rising competition from local restaurant brands. Its troubles have forced the fast-food chain to separate its China business from its U.S. operations, the biggest shake-up at the company since it was spun off from PepsiCo Inc. almost two decades ago. Bloomberg